The post Bitcoin Takes Step Towards Quantum Fix as Experts Diverge on Urgency of Threat appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

In brief Developers merge BIP 360 into the Bitcoin’s GitHub improvement repository, advancing a post-quantum framework. Caltech President Thomas Rosenbaum said fault-tolerant quantum systems could arrive within five to seven years. Other researchers and NIST guidance suggest cryptographically relevant machines may remain years or decades away. Bitcoin developers have taken another step towards addressing the risk posed by future quantum computers, merging BIP 360 into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals GitHub repository as the long-running debate over the timeline intensifies. BIP 360 introduces a new output type called Pay-to-Merkle-Root, or P2MR. The design disables a technical feature called key-path spending, which exposes public keys when coins are spent, and lays the groundwork for adding post-quantum signature schemes in future soft forks. The merge does not activate the change, but rather moves the proposal into formal review. Ethan Heilman, a cryptographic researcher and BIP 360 co-author, told Decrypt that the proposal addresses a specific weakness in Taproot, an upgrade added to the Bitcoin network in 2021. “The key spend is not quantum-safe because it exposes the public key,” he said, “which means that a quantum attacker could attack the key spend and steal your funds, even if the script spend was totally safe.”  Pay-to-Merkle-Root removes the vulnerable portion of Taproot while preserving its ability to upgrade. “This is important,” he said, “because it removes the quantum-vulnerable key path spend.” The debate around how best to address a future quantum threat stems from Shor’s algorithm, which could derive private keys from public keys if run on a sufficiently powerful, fault-tolerant quantum computer. In a recent public discussion, Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum said he expects fault-tolerant quantum systems to emerge within years. “We will, I believe, create a functioning, fault-tolerant quantum computer in five to seven years,” he told the audience, adding that…

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Filed under: News - @ February 15, 2026 4:18 pm