Share this article
Quantum-safe bitcoin now possible without a soft fork, but costs $200 a pop, new research shows
A new scheme from a StarkWare researcher works under existing consensus rules, offering an emergency fallback while BIP-360 awaits activation.
Apr 10, 2026, 3:54 a.m.
What to know:
- A StarkWare researcher has proposed Quantum Safe Bitcoin, a hash-based scheme that can make bitcoin transactions resistant to quantum attacks today without changing the Bitcoin protocol.
- The method works within existing consensus rules but requires massive off-chain GPU computation, driving estimated costs to $75 to $200 per transaction and making it far more complex than standard payments.
- Framed as a last-resort emergency tool rather than a permanent fix, QSB contrasts with long-term proposals like BIP-360, which seek protocol-level quantum resistance but are likely years away from activation.
The hash-based design survives the kind of quantum attack that would break today’s cryptography, but shifts the burden from consensus to computation, requiring heavy off-chain GPU work for every transaction.
Think of traditional digital signatures as a handwritten signature on a cheque, which proves you authorized a transaction using a secret key that others can cross check with a public key.
In Bitcoin, these digital signatures are called ECDSA signatures. They are secure against today’s computers, but a sufficiently powerful future quantum computer could, in theory, derive the secret key from a public key and potentially compromise funds.
