BIP-360 Post-Quantum Upgrade Moves to Bitcoin Quantum Testnet

Bitcoin developers are advancing the post-quantum upgrade BIP-360 (Pay to Merkle Root, P2MR) as quantum-computing research raises new cryptographic risk. The later coverage adds sharper claims from Google Quantum AI: 256-bit ECC could be broken much faster than expected, potentially on the order of minutes with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, while top Ethereum wallets could be compromised in about nine days. For traders, the key part is how BIP-360 is designed to reduce exposure. It mitigates Taproot-era weaknesses where key-path spending can reveal public keys, replacing public-key-reliant spending with a Merkle-root transaction structure aimed at lowering the effectiveness of future quantum attacks (including those tied to Shor’s algorithm). Industry estimates also highlight “long-exposure” risk: if public keys are already visible on-chain, millions of BTC could be vulnerable—adding urgency to defensive protocol work, even if timing remains uncertain. On implementation, BTQ Technologies published BIP-360 on the Bitcoin Quantum Testnet v0.3.0. The testnet introduces new address formats and Dilithium-based signature components, cuts block times to 1 minute, and reports 50+ miners, 100,000+ blocks processed, and 100+ open-source contributors. This is still draft and experimental, but BIP-360 testnet deployment signals that performance and security evaluation is underway before any mainnet activation. In short: BIP-360 is progressing from theory to engineering on testnet, but without active deployment consensus yet—so near-term price impact on BTC is likely limited.