PANews reported on April 9th, citing CoinDesk, that Wall Street brokerage Bernstein released a report stating that the rise of quantum computing poses a real but manageable threat to Bitcoin cryptography, with recent technological breakthroughs shortening the timeline for potential attacks. Advances by Google's quantum AI in areas such as reducing the demand for qubits mean that this risk is no longer a distant decade away, but scaling quantum systems to the level required to break widespread encryption still presents complex challenges. Analysts say that quantum computing should be viewed as a medium- to long-term system upgrade cycle rather than a risk. The risk is concentrated in approximately 1.7 million older "legacy" Bitcoin wallets, and the SHA hashing algorithm, upon which Bitcoin mining relies, remains secure even in advanced quantum scenarios. Bernstein anticipates a three- to five-year window for the crypto industry to transition to quantum-resistant cryptography through protocol upgrades and wallet replacements; upgrades such as new wallet standards, reduced address reuse, and key rotation are already under discussion.