BlockBeats News, May 18th - Citibank stated in a recent report that the advancement of quantum computing technology is progressing faster than market expectations, and is accelerating the potential security risks faced by cryptocurrency and internet infrastructure, with Bitcoin being considered one of the assets with the "highest risk exposure."

The report points out that the ECDSA elliptic curve encryption system currently used by Bitcoin could theoretically be broken by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. In the future, attackers may be able to derive private keys from publicly known public keys, enabling them to forge transactions and steal assets.

Citigroup analyst Alex Saunders stated that due to Bitcoin's relatively conservative governance mechanism and slow protocol upgrade speed, it is more difficult for Bitcoin to quickly undergo a quantum-resistant upgrade compared to PoS networks like Ethereum.

The report estimates that currently there are approximately 6.5 million to 6.9 million BTC at potential quantum risk due to exposed public keys, accounting for about one-third of the current circulating supply, with a value of approximately $450 billion at the current price. This includes some early P2PK addresses, as well as wallets believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto.

Citibank also warns of the "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" risk, where attackers currently gather encrypted data and will decrypt it collectively in the future when quantum computing power matures. However, Citibank remains optimistic about the industry's long-term adaptability to quantum threats, believing that the blockchain can still migrate through post-quantum cryptography and protocol reconfiguration. The report mentions that the proposed upgrades BIP-360 and BIP-361 under discussion in the Bitcoin community are worth paying attention to.