The future of digital money is facing a new kind of boogeyman. A report from Google (GOOGL) has sent a shockwave through the crypto world by revealing that powerful quantum computers could crack blockchain security much sooner than anyone thought.
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While this news has some investors worried, experts say that XRP (XRP-USD) is built much tougher than its older brother, Bitcoin (BTC-USD). Because of how the XRP Ledger (XRPL) was designed, it has a much smaller bullseye on its back.
XRP Is Quantum-Safe By Default
The biggest threat from a quantum computer is that it can “see” a public key on the blockchain and use it to guess a person’s private password. However, a quantum computer can only do this if the public key has been shown to the world.
A recent audit by the XRPL validator known as Vet found that 300,000 XRP accounts, holding a total of 2.4 billion XRP, are already quantum-safe by default. These accounts have received money but have never sent any. Because they have never made a transaction, their public keys are still hidden from the network.
The XRP Ledger Has a Secret Weapon
The XRP Ledger has a secret weapon called key rotation. This allows a user to change their account’s lock (the signing key) without ever having to move their funds to a new address.
According to the validator Vet on X, “The XRP Ledger is account based and allows for signing key rotation. so you can rotate keys that sign on behalf of an account without switching the account.” While they noted that “this is obviously not a perfect solution at all and actual quantum resistant algorithms will eventuell be adopted,” it provides a vital layer of defense. This means you can change the “lock” on your digital vault without having to move all your money to a new location.
Additionally, Ripple staff engineer Mayukha Vadari pointed out that escrow time-locks add another layer of protection. These funds are locked by simple math and logic. Vadari explained that “Time locks aren’t hash based either, you just can’t get in until that time has passed (at least not via quantum – you’d need some other bug for that).” He admitted that “attacker is less incentivized to do that because they don’t get the funds.”
Why Bitcoin Is a Sitting Duck
In comparison, Bitcoin looks much more vulnerable. Google estimates that roughly 6.9 million BTC, about 35% of all Bitcoin in existence, is sitting in old wallets where the public keys are already wide open. This includes the famous 1 million BTC belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin lacks the key rotation feature that XRP has. If a Bitcoin holder wants to protect their coins, they have to physically move them to a new address. The problem is that during the 10 minutes it takes for that move to happen, the public key is revealed to the network. Google found that a strong quantum machine could potentially hijack that transaction in just nine minutes.
While 0.03% of the XRP supply is currently at risk, Bitcoin’s 35% exposure makes it a much bigger target for the quantum age. Developers for both networks are already working on post-quantum updates, but for now, the XRP Ledger is holding the high ground.
At the time of writing, XRP’s price is sitting at $1.3392.
