The market appears to be reassessing the long-term technological risks in cryptocurrencies following Google’s major quantum computing research update on Monday.
While leading currencies like bitcoin and ether (ETH) have seen only modest moves in the past 24 hours, several cryptocurrencies linked to the quantum resistance narrative have risen sharply, with some gaining over 50%.
This outperformance of so-called quantum-resistant tokens shows how quickly the market is pricing in potential technological risks, even if they are still theoretical. While quantum computers are still years away from attacking Bitcoin, traders are already showing an appetite for “future-proof” assets.
On Monday night, Google’s quantum AI team suggested that quantum computers could break the elliptic curve cryptography used by Bitcoin, with fewer than 500,000 quantum qubits, which is significantly less than previously estimated. This led some analysts to cite 2029 as a potential deadline for Bitcoin and the broader blockchain ecosystem to strengthen their defenses.
The study said that a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could attack Bitcoin in nine minutes. A separate report highlighted Ethereum’s vulnerabilities, identifying five potential attack vectors that could put some $100 billion in assets at risk, including DeFi and tokenized holdings.
However, these types of machines do not exist and remain a threat that will still take a few years to arrive.
Still, in the past 24 hours, the market has shown increased interest in cryptocurrencies and projects that emphasize post-quantum cryptographic designs, future-proof security research, or that appear relatively more resilient than legacy chains.
In particular, Quantum Resistance Ledger (QRL) and Cellframe (CEL) are up 50%, reflecting the growing market attention towards truly post-quantum protocols, according to data source Coingecko. Other tokens in the category, such as Abelian (ABEL), have risen 25%, while Qubic (QUBIC) and QANplatform (QANX) have gained 10% each, and even privacy-focused Zcash (ZEC) has added almost 7% in the same period.
The market capitalization of this group, which comprises 20 coins, has increased by 8% to $4.66 billion in the last 24 hours. It’s worth noting that ZEC is not yet truly quantum-resistant, but data sources still include it in the category due to its advanced cryptographic underpinnings, such as zero-knowledge proofs and ongoing research into post-quantum-safe ZK-SNARKs. These factors make it part of the “quantum-aware” narrative, even if it does not currently fully implement post-quantum cryptography.
While the risks remain largely theoretical, they have been influencing market behavior since last year. According to Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments, concerns about quantum attacks contributed to Bitcoin’s decoupling from the surging stock market in the second half of 2025, with the cryptocurrency falling from $126,000 to $80,000 in the final months of the year.
“We have already started to see quantum risk being built into the price of Bitcoin. It is the main reason Bitcoin is trading -50% against the S&P 500 and -90% against gold since the inaugural Bitcoin Quantum Summit seven months ago,” Edwards said in a report in February.
Coincidentally, this was exactly the period when quantum resistance leader ZEC staged a strong rally. ZEC rose over 1200% in the second half of 2025, reaching a high of $744.
