Post-quantum computing resistance for the crypto industry may be urgently needed.
Written by: Ma He, Foresight News
On June 22, Trump signed two executive orders in one day. One requires all U.S. federal agencies to upgrade all their cryptographic systems to new standards by 2030 to resist the cracking threat of quantum computing; the other orders the Department of Energy to lead the construction of a "national quantum computer."
Quantum computing has moved from being a technical discussion in labs to a national mandatory plan.
In early 2025, tech industry tycoon Jensen Huang expressed a pessimistic attitude toward quantum computers, saying, "A truly practical quantum computer may still take 15 to 30 years to realize." However, his attitude changed just two months later. This year, NVIDIA released an AI-driven Ising model, and Huang stated that this would make AI the control plane and operating system for quantum machines, transforming fragile qubits into scalable, highly reliable systems and building industry-level standardized infrastructure for quantum computing.
Quantum computing may see a significant acceleration in development with the support of AI. The faster it develops, the growing threat it poses to current system security.
2030 Deadline: A Mandatory Order to "Replace Locks" Nationwide
Once large-scale quantum computers emerge, existing cryptographic systems will be breached. Even more insidious is the practice of "harvest now, decrypt later"—adversaries can store your encrypted data now and slowly decrypt it once quantum machines mature in a decade.
Therefore, the U.S. government has issued a mandatory order. All federal agencies' high-value assets and high-impact systems must complete the migration of key establishment to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) by December 31, 2030. Additionally, they must complete the PQC migration of digital signatures by December 31, 2031.
Each agency must appoint a PQC migration lead within 30 days, who will report directly to the White House OMB and the National Cyber Director. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) must launch a PQC migration pilot for its own systems within 180 days and complete it by the end of 2027.
In addition, federal procurement regulations will be revised within 180 days, and all contractors supplying the U.S. government—from Microsoft, Amazon Web Services to various IT service providers—must comply with PQC standards by 2030. The Department of Homeland Security will also assist critical infrastructure such as power grids, banks, hospitals, and communication operators in formulating migration plans.
The U.S. government is using administrative power to force a major upgrade of global internet security infrastructure.
Another document signed by Trump on the same day, "Unlocking the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation," also puts the quantum computing race on the table.
The U.S. government wants a large-scale machine that can be delivered to the Department of Energy's national laboratories and truly solve problems that classical supercomputers cannot. The White House requires the Department of Energy to publicly release technical specifications within 90 days and explore public-private partnership models within 180 days.
Perhaps this is the "Manhattan Project" moment in the field of quantum computing. The government provides funding, policies, and orders, and through national will, accelerates the evolution of quantum information technology from laboratory prototypes to engineering tools.
The U.S. is rushing to upgrade its cryptography, and the cryptography of the crypto industry is also facing numerous crises.
Post-Quantum Resistance in the Crypto Industry
Bitcoin's foundational ECDSA elliptic curve signature can theoretically be cracked by quantum computers.
According to research data released by BTQ Technologies in October 2025, the public keys of approximately 6.65 million Bitcoins (worth about $745 billion at the time) have been permanently exposed on the chain, including 1.9 million Bitcoins from early P2PK addresses and about 4 million Bitcoins from reused addresses.
These BTC do not need to wait for quantum computers to actively attack transaction broadcasts—the public keys have been on the blockchain for more than a decade, and once quantum computers mature, they can slowly reverse-engineer the private keys offline.
Since November 2021, Bitcoin's underlying protocol has not activated a soft fork for more than four years. The BIP-360 proposal puts forward some mitigation measures, but it is still far from a complete solution. Historical experience is also not optimistic: Bitcoin's SegWit upgrade took three years from its proposal in December 2015 to its mainstream adoption in December 2018.
In January this year, BTQ Technologies Corp. launched a testnet called Bitcoin Quantum. This testnet is fully open and permissionless, and it is inviting miners, developers, researchers, and users to run nodes, build tools, audit cryptography, and conduct stress tests on quantum-resistant transactions before the mainnet migration.
However, there are still significant challenges to reaching a multi-party consensus in the future.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong refuted that the threat of quantum computing to Bitcoin is greatly exaggerated. "This is not a problem unique to cryptocurrencies; it's something the whole world needs to address. We are working directly with core developers to handle quantum issues."
In addition to Bitcoin, other project protocols are also vigorously advancing post-quantum resistance plans.
The Ethereum Foundation has established a dedicated post-quantum security research team and listed PQC as a priority. Nico, the head of the Ethereum Foundation's privacy project Kohaku, stated in a post that Ethereum can now start preparing at the account level for the post-quantum era without waiting for an underlying hard fork upgrade.
Solana has established the Falcon signature standard and released a three-phase migration roadmap. The NEAR development team plans to add a post-quantum secure signature scheme to the testnet by the end of Q2 2026. Zcash expects to achieve protocol-level post-quantum privacy protection by the end of 2026 through the Tachyon upgrade.
In this life-or-death race against quantum computing, highly centralized federal agencies have pressed the "5-year countdown" hard switch. For decentralized networks with worrying governance efficiency and reliance on consensus, the real test is not when the quantum crisis will arrive, but whether the industry can complete this post-quantum upgrade before Satoshi's black box is completely decrypted.