With the progression of Bitcoin[BTC] reserve plans in the United States, Utah has taken the lead in the race for state-level Bitcoin reserves following approval by the Senate Committee.
Utah’s bill, in accordance with Bitcoin regulations, will now advance to the second and third Senate readings before a final vote.
The next crucial step involves the bill being signed into law by the governor upon successful passage through the remaining stages. Noteworthy progress has also been made by states such as Arizona (AZ), Montana (MT), and Oklahoma (OK) with regards to their respective BTC reserve bills.
Microsoft’s Role in the Bitcoin Quantum Landscape
If these bills are ratified, states would be permitted to broaden their reserve assets portfolio, embracing the volatility, risks, and potential gains associated with BTC.
A recent market report by VanEck forecasts that should these reserve bills be given the green light, 20 states could generate demand for at least $23 billion worth of BTC.
Moreover, the asset management firm approximates that a U.S. national reserve encompassing 1 million BTC could potentially offset around $21 trillion, equivalent to 18% of the existing U.S. debt by the year 2049.
However, the looming Quantum threat to BTC remains a concern. While Google’s Willow quantum chip possesses only a limited number of Qbits to breach BTC wallets, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, anticipates that their quantum chip could amass one million Qbits by the years 2027-2029. This quantum leap in computational power could potentially compromise BTC and various other contemporary cryptographic systems.
According to insights from the BTC trading platform River, a computer of such nature could decrypt BTC wallets within a mere two weeks. As the quantum computer scales up to 13-300 million Qbits, this decryption timeframe could be slashed to approximately less than eight hours.
In essence, River emphasizes that the Bitcoin network needs to fortify itself against quantum vulnerabilities prior to 2027; failure to do so could place 5.9 million BTC at immediate risk.
“In a more plausible scenario, a Quantum Computer with 13-300 million qubits would be capable of executing a swift attack within 1-8 hours, jeopardizing 5.9 million BTC.”
Various propositions, such as QuBit, have been put forth to bolster the Bitcoin network’s resilience in the post-quantum computing era. Nevertheless, the success of such endeavors in upgrading the network to withstand quantum threats remains uncertain. The inability to quantum-proof the network could potentially disrupt states’ Bitcoin reserve strategies, as the looming quantum chip threat could jeopardize BTC security.