Bitcoin’s quantum-safe protection gets 82% cheaper as researchers race to secure 6 million exposed BTC

Researchers have cut the estimated computing cost of a specialized quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction by 82% to $59.

Data from the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge showed that improvements in graphics processing software reduced the projected expense from approximately $320 during StarkWare's first mainnet demonstration in August to $67 in September and $59 as of Oct. 13.

The breakthrough could make a specialized Bitcoin protection method more affordable as developers seek ways to safeguard cryptocurrency holdings against future quantum computers without waiting for changes to the network's underlying protocol.

The public competition, organized by StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs, used AI-assisted coding tools to accelerate the computational searches required for the transactions.

Its latest benchmark recorded more than 1 billion verified candidates per second on an Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU, up from an initial rate of approximately 146 million.

However, the $59 figure remains a hardware-dependent estimate based on simulated GPU workloads rather than a completed production transaction. Bitcoin network fees are separate, while some computing stages still rely on provisional assumptions.

StarkWare said the improvements make its proposed emergency protection method considerably cheaper to prepare, with researchers now targeting a computing cost below $10.

The development builds on research by StarkWare's Avihu Levy, who demonstrated in August that Bitcoin could support a quantum-resistant spending arrangement under its existing consensus rules.

Known as Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB), the method uses hash-based cryptography and a computational puzzle to secure specially prepared Bitcoin holdings against attacks on conventional digital signatures.