An XRPL validator says only 0.03% of circulating XRP is exposed to quantum attacks, while Bitcoin’s share is near 32% to 35%. The analysis was released on April 7, days after a Google paper renewed concern about quantum threats to blockchain security. As debate grows, one question now hangs over the market: can Bitcoin adapt before the migration window closes?
The gap starts with network design. Bitcoin uses a UTXO model, and public keys can appear in the transaction data under certain conditions. Early pay-to-public-key outputs left keys exposed for years.
Around 6.9 million BTC sit in those wallets, including an estimated one million BTC linked to Satoshi Nakamoto. At current values cited in the analysis, that stash represents roughly $440 billion.
XRPL uses an account-based model instead. Public keys appear only after the first outgoing signed transaction. As a result, users who never send funds keep their keys hidden.
Vet, the validator behind the analysis, said about 300,000 XRP accounts holding a combined 2.4 billion XRP have never sent a transaction. Their public keys, therefore, remain out of view.
He found only two dormant whale accounts with exposed keys. Together, they hold about 21 million XRP. Against a circulating XRP supply of 61 billion, that equals the cited 0.03%.
Bitcoin also lacks native key rotation. Users must move funds to new addresses, yet that step briefly exposes the public key in the mempool during the transaction window.
In late March, Google Quantum AI published research that cut earlier estimates to break Bitcoin’s ECDSA-256 encryption. The paper said fewer than 500,000 physical qubits could do the job.
That figure marked a sharp drop from 2019 estimates. Google also modeled an attack against Bitcoin’s ten-minute block confirmation window and placed the success rate at 41%.
The researchers urged the crypto industry to migrate to post-quantum cryptography by 2029. That timeline added weight to an issue that many developers had treated as distant.
The vet said current quantum systems still cannot break blockchain encryption. Still, the analysis noted that progress now moves faster than many expected and that migration may need to happen within three to five years.
The report also splits Bitcoin’s risk into two attack paths. One targets dormant coins whose public keys already sit in the open. The other targets the short period when a public key appears in the mempool.
Security experts therefore recommend moving Bitcoin to bc1 addresses, including Native SegWit or Taproot. That reduces exposure for many users, though it cannot fix the roughly 6.9 million BTC in legacy wallets.
Read More: Bitcoin Price Struggles Below $75,000 Resistance Amid Global Pressure
In December 2025, the XRP Ledger moved its testnet to CRYSTALS-Dilithium, a post-quantum standard recognized by NIST. The change covered accounts, transactions, and validator consensus.
The network also began testing ML-DSA signatures as another quantum-resistant option. At the same time, XRPL retained a structural advantage through key rotation, which lets users change signing keys without moving funds.
Its validator model also allows encryption changes without a hard fork. That gives XRPL a faster adjustment path than Bitcoin’s BIP-based process, which depends on broader consensus.
The report also points to escrow and timelock tools on XRPL. Those controls protect funds through time-based logic rather than cryptography alone, adding another layer to the security model.
Grayscale named the XRP Ledger as one of the few networks actively testing post-quantum standards. Bitcoin developers continue to study quantum-resistant upgrades at the BIP level, yet no proposal has reached formal adoption.
Even after users migrate funds, Bitcoin still faces the brief mempool exposure window. By contrast, XRPL’s key rotation model avoids that step, leaving the wider industry focused on the 2029 deadline.
The report says XRP quantum risk remains far lower than Bitcoin’s exposed supply because of key exposure differences and faster post-quantum testing on XRPL. As the 2029 migration target draws closer, crypto users and developers now face growing pressure to prepare older wallets and upgrade network security.