Despite the rumors and fear-mongering, Quantum computers are still years away from threatening today’s financial systems. But the cost of preparing for them is already becoming real In March, Google researchers estimated that a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could break widely used 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography in minutes. This is the same level of cryptography used by crypto wallets, custody systems, blockchain signatures and much of the security infrastructure used by financial institutions. Although Q-Day might not be tomorrow, governments have started planning. Because the risk is too great to ignore. The US is budgeting billions of dollars to move federal systems to new post-quantum standards, while NIST wants vulnerable algorithms phased out by 2035. The transition is much harder for crypto. Assets worth billions can sit untouched for decades, old wallets may never be upgraded, and institutional custody systems were built around cryptography that quantum machines are expected to break. BeInCrypto spoke with experts from BitGo, Nethermind and the cryptography community about what that migration will actually involve — and who will end up paying for it. The Quantum Risk For Crypto’s Institutional Giants All three of our interviewed experts agree on the same thing. Institutions need a complete record of where vulnerable cryptography is used, including signing systems, hardware, recovery procedures, authentication and long-lived keys. Nigel Smart, who has a PHD in Computational Number Theory, describes this as a Cryptographic Bill of Materials. “The post-quantum standards are already in place, as well as many production-ready implementations. What most organizations lack is the clear inventory, something called a Cryptographic Bill of Materials. Knowing where crypto is used in your organization, how keys are managed, and what algorithms are used.” NIST similarly places discovery and prioritization near the beginning of the transition process. For Akshay Thakur from BitGo, institutional custody introduces