Q-Day could first appear as unexplained thefts from exchange hot wallets or stablecoin administrator wallets rather than a sudden movement of Satoshi Nakamoto's estimated 1.1 million BTC, worth roughly $63 billion, because a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from a public key alone. Christopher Smith, co-founder and CEO of Quantus Network, said such an attack could leave almost no forensic trace and that Tether's USDT issuance key may be a more economically attractive target than Satoshi-linked coins because control of it could let an attacker mint tokens and sell them, while Sean Cheetam, a security researcher at Blockchain Capital, said exchange hot wallets would attract less immediate scrutiny. Google in March moved its target for shifting to quantum-resistant cryptography up to 2029 as AI improved quantum algorithm efficiency, and Roi Blackstone, CEO of hardware wallet firm NGRAVE, said earlier threat models underestimated how quickly AI and quantum advances could reinforce each other. Smith put the odds of existing public-key cryptography being broken before 2028 at "50-50," Cheetam said the early 2030s are "almost certain" and an earlier arrival is more of a "tail risk," and Michael Kotz, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of the Solana Foundation, said the timetable cannot be known even as preparations should not be delayed. Some networks carrying USDT have already begun quantum-resistant transition efforts.