BTQ Technologies releases quantum bitcoin mining research: actual costs are extremely high, and the real risk lies in a signature vulnerability

Gate News, April 6, BTQ Technologies released a research paper titled “Kardashev Scale Quantum Computing for Bitcoin Mining,” which provides the first quantified assessment of the end-to-end physical costs of using quantum computing for Bitcoin mining. The study notes that the market has long been confusing two categories of quantum threats: one is attacks against Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve digital signatures (real and urgent), and the second is quantum mining accelerated by Grover’s algorithm (theoretically possible but with extremely high real-world costs). The research shows that to have a substantive impact on consensus, it would be necessary to build a quantum computing cluster whose energy consumption far exceeds the current level of human civilization. The study proposes an open-source resource estimation model, covering key components such as reversible double SHA-256 computation, fault-tolerant quantum error correction, and the scheduling of large-scale quantum bits. The conclusion emphasizes that Bitcoin’s more realistic risk comes from vulnerabilities in cryptographic signatures rather than from quantum mining capabilities.