Crypto’s Real Quantum Risk Is Data in Transit, Not Wallet Keys

The Risk Is in the Data Already Moving

The crypto industry’s focus on quantum-proofing wallets may be aimed at the wrong target, according to Andrew Gault, chief executive of networking firm Zerotier. He argues that the most pressing danger is not stored keys but the information flowing between institutions in real time, further adding:

“The financial system’s most dangerous vulnerability isn’t stored data, it’s the data moving between institutions right now. Every interbank message, every payment authentication record, and every digital signature traveling across a network today is being collected by sophisticated adversaries who don’t need to read it yet.”

Gault’s warning centers on a strategy security researchers call “harvest now, decrypt later.” The idea is that an attacker does not need a working quantum computer today to benefit from one tomorrow. Encrypted traffic can be copied and stored cheaply now, then decrypted years later once a sufficiently powerful machine exists.

That reframes the quantum threat from a future event into a present-day data-collection problem. Post-quantum cryptography (encryption designed to withstand quantum attacks) only protects information going forward. Anything captured before the upgrade remains exposed to retroactive decryption, which is why Gault and others argue the clock is already running.

Why the Proof Layer Matters

The data being harvested is not just sensitive but foundational, Gault believes. He described the authentication records moving across networks as “the proof layer that determines who owns what, who authorized which transaction, and who bears legal liability.”

If that layer can eventually be decrypted and forged, the consequences extend well beyond individual wallets. Settlement records, signatures and payment confirmations underpin the trust between banks, exchanges and blockchains. An adversary able to rewrite or impersonate them in the future could call past transactions into question, a systemic risk rather than a series of isolated thefts.

The warning sharpens an uncomfortable contrast because while Ethereum has moved toward a coordinated post-quantum migration, Bitcoin has not adopted a comparable plan. Bitcoin’s transactions are secured by the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA), a scheme that a powerful enough quantum computer could in theory break.

However, timelines are still quite contested as analyst Nic Carter believes that a so-called Q-Day could arrive by 2035, while other estimates are far more aggressive, placing a code-breaking machine as early as 2027. Google’s quantum advances have repeatedly pushed the security debate back into focus, as venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya recently warned that non-state actors could one day target Bitcoin’s holdings as a “honeypot.”

And, while developers have grown more vocal after years of relative silence, the prevailing approach still favors voluntary transitions and waiting for mature standards rather than a forced protocol change, a posture that Gault’s comments implicitly challenge.

Securing Data In Transit

Zerotier is not a neutral bystander in the debate as the firm recently launched Zerotier Quantum, a networking platform built to meet the U.S. government’s highest cryptographic benchmarks, including standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Gault’s framing naturally favors securing data in transit, the problem his product addresses.

Still, the underlying point is hard to dismiss. If adversaries are already banking encrypted traffic for a future payday, then the window to protect it is now, not on Q-Day. For Bitcoin in particular, the question is whether a community that prizes deliberate, consensus-driven change can move fast enough to defend data that is being harvested while the debate continues.