Quantum Computers Could Wipe Out 30% of Bitcoin. XRP Says Only 0.03% of Its Supply Is at Risk

Bitcoin’s quantum debate stopped being academic last week.

On Aug. 18, 2026, CoinMarketCap reported that Bitcoin developers had put forward BIP-361, a proposal to freeze quantum-vulnerable addresses, and Bitnovo coverage on Aug. 13, 2026 detailed the technical plan to protect roughly 6.9 million BTC that sit in wallets whose public keys are already visible on the blockchain. A public key is the address string a network sees; a private key is the secret that authorizes spending from it. In classical cryptography the public key does not give away the private key. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer would change that.

The freeze proposal has revived a comparison that keeps circulating: Glassnode research dated May 20, 2026 pegs Bitcoin’s quantum-exposed supply at 6.04 million BTC, or 30.2% of issued supply, while an XRP Ledger validator audit published April 7, 2026 by the researcher known as @Vet_X0 concluded that only about 21 million XRP, or roughly 0.03% of the roughly 100 billion total supply, sits in dormant large-holder accounts with exposed public keys.

Are these two readings actually measuring the same thing? Has the crowd already drawn the correct conclusion from them?

Our answer, in short: no. Both figures are weaker signals than the headline versions make them look, in different ways.