TechFlow News: On February 23, according to Forbes, Bitcoin Core developer Murch announced on February 11 that BIP 360 (Pay to Merkle Root, P2MR) has officially entered the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIP) repository—marking the first time the Bitcoin development community has formally incorporated quantum-resistance capabilities into its official technical roadmap. Drafted jointly by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Isabel Foxen Duke, the proposal is currently in the review and discussion phase and has not yet activated any protocol changes.
The core design of BIP 360 builds upon the Taproot architecture by introducing a new output type—P2MR—which hides public keys within the Merkle tree root hash, thereby eliminating the long-term exposure of public keys on-chain and protecting against potential quantum attacks where Shor’s algorithm could derive private keys from exposed public keys. P2MR is an optional addition—not a replacement—for existing output formats, allowing users to choose their own migration timing. Co-author Heilman noted that BIP 360 represents only the “first step”; full quantum security will require subsequent integration of post-quantum signature algorithms.
Regarding risk scale, a report released by the Human Rights Foundation in October 2025 indicated that approximately 1.72 million BTC (over $115 billion) reside in early address formats highly vulnerable to quantum attack; another 4.49 million BTC (roughly $300 billion) are held in addresses whose owners could mitigate risk by migrating. Together, these two categories represent about 31% of the total market value of Bitcoin’s circulating supply.
On the timeline front, Google revised its estimate in 2025 for the number of qubits required to break RSA-2048 encryption—from tens of millions down to 900,000—and a recent preprint paper suggests the threshold may fall below 100,000 qubits. Caltech President Thomas Rosenbaum estimates fault-tolerant quantum computers could emerge within five to seven years. The U.S. federal government has mandated phasing out ECDSA-based cryptography by 2035, while the Department of Defense has set an internal quantum-readiness deadline of 2030.
If the Bitcoin community initiates and reaches consensus immediately, completing a comprehensive quantum-resistant upgrade is projected to take approximately seven years—spanning BIP ratification, code review, consensus formation, activation, and full ecosystem-wide upgrade.
