How Does a Preimage Attack Relate to the Security of Bitcoin’s Public Key Hashing?

Bitcoin uses a double-hashing process (SHA-256 then RIPEMD-160) to generate a public address from a public key. A preimage attack on this system would mean an attacker could derive the public key from the public address.

If the public key is known, the private key can sometimes be targeted with other attacks, though it remains computationally difficult. The primary security concern is the exposure of the public key before a transaction is spent.