Every quantum doomsday scenario starts the same way: the moment a machine can break Bitcoin's cryptography, the coins start moving. But the first machines that can do it will be slow, cost $100 million to $1 billion to build, and belong to companies that need to earn that money back. So what does a quantum attack on Bitcoin actually cost, and who pays the price first? In the [Nth] episode of The Quantum Bitcoin Podcast, Bitcoin historian Pete Rizzo and co-host Nathan Jeffay put that question to Pierre-Luc Dallaire-Demers, founder and CEO of Pauli Group, a quantum physicist who has worked in quantum computing since 2006, and who prices the first attacks at $1 million to $10 million per key.Episode [N] is the one that puts a number on the threat: how a machine that lasts a year or two gets amortized across a handful of keys per week, why breaking Bitcoin is the only profitable job for the first generation of quantum computers, and why small holders face lottery odds while exchanges, ETFs and sovereign funds sit at the front of the line. He explains why the first attacks could stay quiet, how key-breaking can be hidden inside what looks like a molecule simulation, and why the price of an attack falls exponentially once the first one lands. It covers his timeline of 2 to 5 years, why he says stopping it would take new physics, and how the resources needed to break a key fell by a factor of 40 to 50 in a single year as researchers used AI agents to rebuild Google's withheld circuit through the ECDSA.Fail project. It closes with his message to Bitcoin developers, that the solutions are starting to arrive and consensus is now the hard part.The Quantum Bitcoin Podcast is a series examining the quantum threat to Bitcoin, designed to be watched in sequence. Each episode opens with a discussion between the hosts, presents extended interviews with expert guests on a single key question, and closes with a recap of how the evidence has changed their thinking.Links referenced:Pauli Group - https://pauli.group/ECDSA.Fail - https://ecdsa.fail/ECDSA.Fail paper - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28882Google Quantum AI elliptic curve resource estimate (March 2026) - [paper link]https://www.nist.gov/pqcryptoCryptography and physicshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Digital_Signature_Algorithmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correctionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptographyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proofhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped-ion_quantum_computerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_quantum_computingGUESTSPierre-Luc Dallaire-Demers is the founder and CEO of Pauli Group, which has worked on deploying post-quantum cryptography to blockchains since 2021. He has been involved in quantum computing since 2006, earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Saarland University in Germany, completed postdoctoral work at Harvard, and worked as a quantum algorithm researcher at Xanadu and Zapata Computing. His recent work includes research on the physical limits of quantum Bitcoin mining and contributions to the ECDSA.Fail paper on quantum circuits for breaking Bitcoin's elliptic curve.FOLLOWThe Quantum Bitcoin Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@QuantumBitcoinPodcastPete Rizzo: https://x.com/pete_rizzo_Pierre-Luc Dallaire-Demers: [X link]New episodes release weekly. Subscribe to follow the full series.

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