Project Eleven warned in a report released May 6, 2026, that Bitcoin and other blockchains could take years to adopt quantum-resistant cryptography, potentially leaving assets exposed if sufficiently powerful quantum computers arrive before the transition is complete.
The report puts the digital asset industry’s aggregate value at more than $3 trillion and says virtually all of it relies on elliptic curve digital signatures. That is the firm’s assessment of the industry’s cryptographic dependence, rather than a calculation of inevitable losses.
Project Eleven’s model places “Q-Day,” the arrival of a quantum computer capable of breaking widely used public-key cryptography, at 2033 in its baseline scenario. Its other scenarios place that point at 2030 and 2042. The report describes these projections as highly uncertain and dependent on improvements in hardware, error correction and algorithms.
The report explains that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could recover private keys from known public keys, enabling an attacker to forge signatures and authorize transactions. Its assessment concerns a future capability; the report says current quantum computers remain below the threshold of cryptographic relevance.
A wider cryptographic transition
Project Eleven’s warning extends beyond digital assets. It also identifies risks to banking, cloud infrastructure, authentication networks, digital identity and military communications that rely on vulnerable public-key cryptography.
The broader transition predates the report. In August 2024, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized its first three post-quantum cryptography standards, covering key establishment and digital signatures. NIST encouraged organizations to begin integration, saying the work would take time.
Project Eleven develops post-quantum security and migration tools for digital assets. In December 2025, it announced a collaboration with the Solana Foundation to assess quantum risks and prepare the network.
Coordinating a Bitcoin upgrade
The report estimates that blockchain migration could take much of a decade. It argues that decentralized networks face particular difficulties because signature schemes are embedded in transaction formats and consensus rules, while individual users may have to move their funds.
Project Eleven says the transition involves wallet updates, exchange integrations, changes for custodians and coordination with users. Its analysis also identifies potential effects on transaction size, block capacity and fees as networks consider different post-quantum signature schemes.
An October 2016 Bitcoin Core upgrade guide described almost two years of design, development and testing for SegWit. It outlined a rollout requiring participation from miners and full-node operators, documenting the coordination involved in an earlier Bitcoin upgrade.
Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden said a post-quantum migration would be harder than Taproot because holders, wallets, exchanges and institutions would need to participate to protect vulnerable funds.
Exposed public keys and dormant coins
The report estimates that approximately 6.9 million BTC were held in addresses it classified as quantum-vulnerable in a February 2026 snapshot. That figure reflects Project Eleven’s analysis of public-key exposure and assumes a future attacker with sufficient quantum-computing capability.
Its categories include early pay-to-public-key outputs, Taproot outputs and holdings affected by address reuse after a public key has been revealed. The report distinguishes those cases from certain unused address types that keep the public key hidden behind a hash until funds are spent.
Lost access to private keys is another migration obstacle identified in the report. The exposure estimate alone does not establish how many owners could move their holdings or how much BTC would remain exposed after a transition.
Pruden also expressed a personal preference for “recycling” dormant, quantum-vulnerable coins back into the end of Bitcoin’s supply curve, rather than leaving them available to a future quantum attacker. He said the community, institutions and market would ultimately decide.
Pruden described the treatment of such coins as a tension between Bitcoin’s fixed-supply principles and digital property rights. His remarks presented a personal position in that debate, rather than an agreed change to Bitcoin’s rules.
