Quantum Risk Institute
Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2025: QRI Reading Notes
QRI uses the 2025 Quantum Threat Timeline Report as a major source for understanding expert views on timing, uncertainty, and migration urgency. This page summarizes the report's risk lessons in QRI language without reproducing its charts or images.
Core reading
The report surveys 26 global experts and frames the risk around a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, or CRQC. It emphasizes that timelines are uncertain, but that many experts now assign non-trivial probability to a CRQC within a decade.
The report's summary highlights the Mosca inequality: if shelf-life plus migration time exceeds the remaining threat time, an organization may already be late.
Key chart concepts translated
- Expert estimates include a broad range of likelihoods, with the report discussing roughly 28% to 49% average estimates for a CRQC within 10 years depending on interpretation.
- The report stresses that quantum error correction and hardware development are the areas most likely to accelerate the timeline.
- HNDL risk means some data can be stolen today and decrypted later if it remains valuable long enough.
- The timeline should be converted into a migration timeline, not treated as a reason to wait.
How QRI uses this source
The Bitcoin Quantum Index does not directly turn the report's date estimates into the dial score. Instead, the report informs the surrounding risk context: migration urgency, uncertainty, hidden research, and the importance of logical qubits.
Related QRI pages
Methodology
How the index avoids date prediction.
Standards tracker
Migration references.
0-100 roadmap
Capability milestones.
Sources and further reading
- Global Risk Institute - Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2025
- CISA - Quantum-readiness migration to post-quantum cryptography
- NIST CSRC - Post-Quantum Cryptography project
QRI content is educational research commentary, not financial advice, legal advice, or a prediction.