Scroll co-founder: Quantum threat to Bitcoin may arrive before community can agree on a fix

Sandy Peng, co-founder of Scroll, wrote in a Forbes op-ed that the threat of quantum computing is expected to become a reality within approximately 10 years. She explained that an attack on Bitcoin from quantum computing would occur in several stages, with the most vulnerable targets being early Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses whose public keys are permanently exposed on the blockchain. "While Bitcoin's value would not drop to zero, its viability would be much lower than expected," Peng argued. She noted that the threat from quantum computing is not inherently a physical issue but rather a problem of governance and coordination. Peng pointed out that the SegWit upgrade, which offered tangible performance improvements, took about two years from its official proposal to implementation. In contrast, she estimates it could take 10 to 15 years for the Bitcoin community to reach a consensus on addressing the quantum computing threat, a timeline almost identical to when the threat is expected to materialize.