Quantum threat forces 63-year old investment bank to abandon Bitcoin

Quantum threat forces 63-year old investment bank to abandon Bitcoin

Anand Sinha

Fri, January 16, 2026 at 5:41 PM EST

2 min read

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Banks spent much of last year warming to crypto, with several major institutions encouraging clients to consider modest crypto allocations.

But as crypto edges closer to the financial mainstream, security concerns are again creeping into portfolio strategy.

The long-term theoretical threat of quantum computing has prompted one of the market’s most closely watched strategists to step away from Bitcoin (BTC).

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Quantum computing's looming threat over Bitcoin

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis warned in a report published on Nov. 19 that in the next 10 to 15 years, sufficiently powerful quantum computers capable of breaking Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography could appear.

The assessment follows rapid progress in quantum research, including recent demonstrations by Google showing quantum processors performing calculations thousands of times faster than classical supercomputers.

While such machines remain far from threatening blockchain networks today, analysts say the pace of improvement is accelerating faster than previously expected.

Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) rely on widely used cryptographic standards, namely ECDSA for digital signatures and SHA-256 or Keccak-256 for hashing.

They are considered secure against classical attacks.

However, Shor’s algorithm, developed by American mathematician and computer scientist Peter Shor, could theoretically allow a sufficiently advanced quantum computer to derive private keys from exposed public keys.

That risk is particularly relevant for early Bitcoin addresses, including Pay-to-Public-Key wallets, which collectively hold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of BTC.

Security researchers stress that executing a quantum attack on Bitcoin would require millions of stable qubits, far beyond today’s error-prone systems.

Still, the so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” threat remains: adversaries could store public-key data today and unlock it years later once quantum hardware matures.

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Analyst removes Bitcoin from portfolio over quantum risk

Recently, Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies, removed Bitcoin from his model portfolio, citing concerns that quantum computing could undermine the asset’s long-term investment case.

As per Bloomberg, in the latest edition of his Greed & Fear newsletter, Wood said advances in quantum technology weaken the argument that Bitcoin can reliably serve as a store of value — particularly for pension-style, long-term investors.

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“There is growing concern in the Bitcoin community that quantum computing could only be a few years away rather than a decade or more,” Wood wrote.

Wood was an early institutional supporter of Bitcoin, adding it to his model portfolio in December 2020 as pandemic-era stimulus fueled fears of currency debasement. He later increased the allocation to 10%.

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jan 16, 2026, where it first appeared in the Technology News section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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