Google Willow Quantum Chip Brings Hack of Old Bitcoin Wallets Closer
The research division Google Quantum AI published a report on the results of tests of the new generation quantum processor Willow in the authoritative scientific journal Science. Experimental data have confirmed a radical reduction in the error rate in the formation of quantum states, which removes one of the key physical obstacles to the practical application of Shor’s algorithm. As the analytical service CoinDesk emphasizes, technological Google’s push directly exacerbates the problem of Bitcoin’s long-term cryptographic stability, jeopardizing Satoshi Nakamoto-era public wallets that hold over 1.7 million BTC worth more than $138 billion at the current asset price of about $81,600.
The achievement of Google physicists touched on an aspect traditionally overlooked in discussions about blockchain vulnerabilities. Conventional quantum attack models have typically only estimated the total number of qubits needed to factorize the secp256k1 elliptic curve, ignoring the computational cost of pre-training quantum states. The Willow chip has demonstrated the ability to prepare specific superpositions with a forty-fold reduction in hardware noise, dramatically reducing the size and complexity of the quantum machine required to recover a private key from a public key.
Which Bitcoin wallets from the Satoshi Nakamoto era are vulnerable to quantum hacking?
Vulnerability to the quantum algorithm is distributed unevenly across the Bitcoin blockchain due to differences in transaction formats:
Direct exposure in P2PK wallets
In the first two years of the network’s existence (2009–2010), rewards to miners for mined blocks were paid according to the Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) standard. In this format, the owner’s full, uncompressed public key was openly written directly into the transaction blocking script (scriptPubKey). All untouched balances from the Satoshi Nakamoto era, including the estimated million coins of the network creator himself, use P2PK and are in a state of constant openness to any quantum search.
Protective hash barrier of modern standards
Later address formats, from the classic Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH, starting with one) to modern Bech32 (SegWit and Taproot), hide the public key behind double cryptographic hashing using the SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160 algorithms. For such wallets, the quantum threat is not relevant until the first outgoing transaction is made from the address. However, addresses from which funds were transferred repeatedly without changing change also revealed their public network keys.
Panic reaction of ancient Bitcoin whales
According to the on-chain platform Arkham Intelligence, the increase in quantum anxiety is already triggering the movement of dormant capital. So, on October 7, 2026, a wallet that had been dormant since July 2010 came into action: the owner moved 100.02 BTC worth $8.2 million to a modern secure address. Earlier in August, six addresses from the period 2011–2014 woke up synchronously, transferring a total of 553.59 BTC (about $45 million). Experts attribute the activation of old holders to the desire to secure savings until the first commercial quantum decryptors appear.
How does the Bitcoin community plan to neutralize the quantum threat?
The architects of the Bitcoin protocol do not consider the quantum threat fatal, but stopping it will require a complex consensus network update:
Transition to post-quantum signatures through a soft fork
Bitcoin Core developers are already testing lattice-based post-quantum cryptography algorithms such as Dilithium and Falcon, as well as Winternitz one-time hash signature (W-OTS) schemes. The introduction of these algorithms into Bitcoin is possible through a backwards-compatible update (soft fork), which will introduce a new type of addresses and rules for validating witness signatures.
The problem of lost coins and freezing of P2PK addresses
The main dilemma for the community remains the “lost” coins of Satoshi Nakamoto and early miners whose keys were lost. To transfer funds from a vulnerable P2PK address to a post-quantum address, the owner must sign the transaction with the old key. If the key is lost, the rightful owner will never be able to complete the migration. This will force the network to make a difficult choice: either carry out an emergency hard fork with the freezing of all untransferred P2PK coins after a certain period, or accept the fact that future owners of quantum computers will have the opportunity to take possession of other people’s millions of coins.
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