On June 22, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to transition to post-quantum encryption. However, experts immediately warned that Bitcoin presents a far more complex challenge — a decentralized network cannot be brought to a unified standard by a top-down directive. Stephan Leichenauer, Vice President of Engineering at SandboxAQ, believes that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer could emerge within three to ten years. Alex Prudden, CEO of Project Eleven, on the other hand, argues that the White House has been slow to revise its timeline: according to his data, the probability of such an event occurring by 2030 is 10%, and by 2033 it rises to 50%. Paul Staimers, Executive Director of the Quantum Industry Coalition, confirms that industry forecasts are converging around 2028–2030, but cautions that public estimates may not account for classified quantum programs in the US and other countries. Project Eleven's report "The Quantum Threat to Blockchains 2026" outlines three scenarios: baseline (2033), optimistic (2030), and pessimistic (2042).

For Bitcoin, the primary threat lies not in mining but in the vulnerability of digital signatures: once a public key is exposed, a quantum computer could derive the private key and authorize any transaction. In March, BTQ Technologies launched the Bitcoin Quantum v0.3.0 testnet, which implements BIP-360, introducing a Pay-to-Merkle-Root output type that closes the loophole in Taproot. A more aggressive proposal, BIP-361, introduced in April, would freeze funds on legacy addresses if owners fail to migrate to quantum-resistant formats. This has sparked heated debate: some view it as a necessary safeguard, while others see it as an infringement on user sovereignty.

While the Bitcoin community struggles to coordinate miners, developers, exchanges, and holders, competing blockchains are moving faster. Stellar and Algorand have already published their post-quantum roadmaps, and the Coinbase board has outlined migration scenarios for Bitcoin. In the Ethereum ecosystem, Nicolás Consigny, lead of the Kohaku project at the Ethereum Foundation, proposed the SPHINCS- solution, which would secure wallets without requiring a hard fork — aligning with the strategic direction the EF adopted back in January.