Solana’s Yakovenko Issues Urgent Warning: Bitcoin Must Upgrade Before 2030 to Survive Quantum Threat

Quantum computing could crack Bitcoin's security by 2030—and Solana's founder says it's time for the OG crypto to evolve or die.

The Encryption Countdown

Yakovenko's warning hits like a thunderclap across crypto circles. Current encryption standards—the bedrock of Bitcoin's security—won't stand a chance against quantum processors. Without a major protocol overhaul, every transaction and wallet becomes vulnerable.

Survival Mode Activated

Bitcoin's core developers face their greatest challenge yet. They're racing against quantum advancements that could render current blockchain security obsolete. The solution? Quantum-resistant algorithms—and they need implementation yesterday.

Meanwhile, traditional finance keeps pretending quantum threats won't affect their legacy systems—because why fix what's already broken?

The clock's ticking. Adapt or get left in the cryptographic dust.

Community pushback

Bitcoin’s design doesn’t make such a change easy. A migration to post-quantum cryptography would require a hard fork, a highly contentious and technically complex process that would need widespread support across the network and would not be backward-compatible.

While Yakovenko stressed urgency, others in the crypto community aren’t convinced the threat is near. Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, estimated that the technology is still somewhat far away and even making Bitcoin quantum-ready is “relatively simple.”

Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd pointed out earlier on social media that quantum computers “don’t exist” as “the demos running toy problems do not count.” To Luke Dashjr, another Bitcoin Core contributor, quantum isn’t as much of a threat to Bitcoin now as spam and developer corruption, which the community can now address.

Yakovenko argued that advances in artificial intelligence show how quickly lab work can leap into the real world. The moment tech giants like Apple or Google roll out quantum-safe cryptographic stacks, he said, “it’s time to migrate.”