AI Models Estimate Bitcoin's Signature Break Risk at 76% Within 20 Years, but Experts Dismiss Imminent Threat

Published October 13, 2026, 00:30 PKT. Based on Bitcoin.com News' AI model experiment of October 11, 2026 as covered by cryptonews.net, on-chain analyst Willy Woo's October 11 estimate reported by Odaily Planet Daily, AnchorWatch researcher Rob Hamilton's October 11 analysis as covered by The Crypto Times, and statements from Coinbase's Yehuda Lindell and Ledger's Charles Guillemet.

Four leading AI models have now weighed in on one of crypto's oldest anxieties: whether Bitcoin's signature cryptography can ever be broken. On-chain analyst Willy Woo shared the AI-generated estimates on October 11, 2026, putting the probability of Bitcoin's digital signatures being cracked within the next two years at 1.3%, according to an Odaily Planet Daily report. The long-range numbers are far more dramatic, with one model assigning a 76% probability to a practical break within 20 years. The near-term numbers, though, sit near zero, and every model agrees that no practical classical cryptanalytic attack against secp256k1 exists today, and that AI improvements have not yet produced a validated cryptanalytic breakthrough.

The four-model experiment: 20-year estimates from 34% to 76%

Bitcoin.com News expanded on Woo's original question and asked roughly four AI models to estimate the cumulative probability that an attacker could derive private keys from exposed public keys at scale, across 2, 5, 10 and 20 year horizons, split between quantum computing and classical or AI-assisted advances. ChatGPT-6 Astra gave the most aggressive numbers: about 1% within 2 years, 10% within 5, 36% within 10, and 76% within 20. Claude Opus 5.5 put the horizons at roughly 1%, 5.5%, 31% and 66%. Grok Expert came in at 2%, 10%, 30% and 60%. Deepseek Deepthink was the most conservative at 0%, 1%, 6% and 34%, according to cryptonews.net's coverage of the experiment.

The models consistently identified quantum computing as the principal long-term threat rather than classical mathematics. Stripping out quantum, the classical and AI-assisted break probabilities were far lower: within 20 years, Grok estimated 10%, Deepseek 5%, Claude about 2% and Astra about 2%, the coverage reported. The models emphasized that these are judgment-based estimates rather than verified probabilities or consensus figures.

Willy Woo's 1.3% two-year figure

Woo's October 11 post, which kicked off the experiment, referenced estimates attributed to Opus 5.5: a 0.5% probability that quantum computing breaks Bitcoin's signatures within two years and a 0.8% probability that classical mathematics or AI does the same, combining to about 1.3%. All four models put the two-year risk between 0% and 2%, with quantum computing named the long-term primary threat, Odaily Planet Daily reported via KuCoin's news flash summary.

Hamilton's five open classical research directions

Separately, Rob Hamilton of AnchorWatch published a detailed analysis on X on October 11 cataloguing the five mathematical research directions that would need to advance for a genuine reduction in the cost of recovering a private key from a public key on secp256k1, The Crypto Times reported. The known classical methods, Pollard's rho and baby-step/giant-step, require on the order of 2^128 group operations against the curve's roughly 256-bit group order, a figure grounded in published algorithms rather than a formal lower bound that rules out every classical approach, according to the coverage.

Hamilton's five directions: index-calculus style approaches using summation polynomials, introduced by Igor Semaev in a 2004 paper, which have not produced a practical attack on prime-field curves; a matrix-based approach searching for zero minors, where an August 2026 revision found the algorithm remains no better than exhaustive search and "poses no current security risk to ECC"; the gap between Pollard's rho and Victor Shoup's 1997 generic lower bound, which any non-generic method exploiting the curve's actual coordinates could theoretically narrow; special structure of secp256k1 itself, including its j-invariant 0 and efficiently computable endomorphism; and lifting the finite-field problem to characteristic zero, which faces obstacles of height control and size blow-up. None of the five currently supplies a justified new classical complexity estimate that makes key recovery affordable at Bitcoin's parameters, he argued, framing the exercise as red-teaming rather than a claim of imminent breakage.

The pushback: no evidence of a break

The crypto industry's top cryptographers pushed back hard. Coinbase's head of cryptography Yehuda Lindell said there is "no evidence whatsoever pointing to a break of decades old hardness assumptions like elliptic curve cryptography" and described the warning as "the very definition of FUD," The Crypto Times reported. Lindell noted that AI proving difficult theorems does not indicate that problems assumed to be hard are not, and that elliptic-curve cryptography has seen essentially no asymptotic improvement in 30 years beyond known generic methods.

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet separately stated that recent AI mathematical results do not indicate an imminent practical ECDSA break, and that any collapse of asymmetric cryptography would compromise TLS, code signing, banking systems and most public-key infrastructure before Bitcoin, the report said. A TFTC.io analysis added that Vitalik Buterin, while wanting the risk from AI-accelerated math taken seriously, does not recommend that anyone scramble to move funds to new wallets today.

This story is a follow-up to MABOnChain's October 8 coverage of Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake's call for crypto "bunker mode," in which Drake warned that AI-accelerated mathematics could threaten elliptic-curve signatures months or years before cryptographically relevant quantum computers arrive. As of October 12, 2026, no public cryptanalysis has demonstrated a classical algorithm that recovers secp256k1 private keys from public keys at the scales used by Bitcoin, according to The Crypto Times.

This article is news reporting and is not investment advice.

Sources

• Bitcoin.com News' AI model experiment of October 11, 2026, as covered by cryptonews.net, primary source for the four-model probability tables, the classical/AI-only breakdown, and each model's reasoning
• Odaily Planet Daily, secondary source for Willy Woo's October 11 post and the 1.3% two-year figure (0.5% quantum plus 0.8% classical/AI), via KuCoin's news flash summary
• The Crypto Times' October 12 report on Rob Hamilton's October 11 analysis, secondary source for the five open research directions, the 2^128 operations figure, Yehuda Lindell's "no evidence whatsoever" response, and Charles Guillemet's statement
• Binance Square's October 12 post on the AI model assessment, secondary source confirming the four models' 2, 5, 10 and 20 year estimates
• TFTC.io's "Don't Panic, and Don't Reuse Addresses" analysis, secondary source for the rebuttal case and the recommendation against scrambling to move funds