Bitcoin Magazine

Galaxy (GLXY) Commits $5 Million to Prepare Bitcoin for the Quantum Threat

Galaxy Digital launched a Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative today, a program that commits up to $5 million in developer grants, a research effort, and a new advisory council to harden the network against the arrival of powerful quantum computers.

The Nasdaq-listed firm framed the multi-pillar effort as an attempt to close a gap between two worlds moving at different speeds. 

“There’s a gap between the quantum computing world, which is moving fast, and the Bitcoin development world, which is just beginning to engage with post-quantum cryptography in earnest,” said Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy, whose team has tracked the threat for Wall Street and cast it as a long-term engineering problem rather than a crisis.

Bitcoin’s security rests on elliptic curve cryptography, a scheme that a machine running Shor’s algorithm could break by deriving a private key from an exposed public key. 

An attacker with such a tool could forge a signature and drain a wallet, with nothing on-chain to flag the theft. No such computer exists today, yet the estimated timeline for one keeps compressing, a trend the Bitcoin Policy Institute has warned narrows the window for the network to upgrade.

Galaxy’s multi-pillar effort to prepare for quantum

The grant program forms the first pillar. Galaxy said it would fund work on quantum-resistant transaction proposals, the integration of post-quantum signature schemes, tooling for wallet and custodian migration, and formal security audits of proposed code. 

Grants will be judged one at a time and paid on a milestone basis, and the firm expects to open applications without delay through the address quantum@galaxy.com.

A research and publishing arm forms the second pillar, with Galaxy Research set to publish analysis of the threat and the developer response for investors, policymakers, and the technical community. 

The third pillar is a Quantum Advisory Council that will guide the research and weigh grant proposals. Its first members are Barry Sanders, professor and scientific director of Quantum City at the University of Calgary; Damien Bérubé, an MIT Sea Grant Knauss Fellow; and Eran Tromer, a professor of computer science at Boston University.

“As leaders in the digital assets space, we believe it’s important that we help be part of the solution to any potential threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin,” said Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy, a figure known for bold price calls on bitcoin. Sanders said quantum timelines “continue to compress” and that bitcoin should be no exception to the preparation underway across governments and industries.

Old and reused addresses face the sharpest risk, since their public keys sit exposed on the ledger. An estimated 1.7 million BTC rest in legacy pay-to-public-key addresses, a stash with keys on permanent display. 

Defenses under review center on migration to quantum-resistant address types and new signature schemes, an approach embodied in BIP-360, a proposal from developer Hunter Beast that removes public-key exposure from standard transactions. 

That proposal merged into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal repository this year, and BTQ Technologies deployed a working implementation on a quantum testnet.

Bitcoin’s decentralized governance turns such changes into a slow process of design, review, testing, and deployment that can span years. Some observers cast that structure as the true obstacle, a governance challenge as much as a cryptographic one, and the pool of developers on the problem stays small next to its scale.

Quantum tech is surging

The launch lands in an active warning cycle. Galaxy Research has held that the risk is real yet the countermeasures are advancing, and President Trump signed executive orders that advance U.S. quantum work and set a 2031 federal deadline for post-quantum defense. NIST finalized its first post-quantum standards in 2024.

Galaxy said it welcomes co-funders and other stakeholders, and acknowledged that peers may pledge their own funds toward the same goal. The firm cast that prospect as a benefit rather than a rivalry, with an open invitation to institutions and developers who want to join.

This post Galaxy (GLXY) Commits $5 Million to Prepare Bitcoin for the Quantum Threat first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Anchorage Digital and Binance Launch Off-Exchange Settlement for Institutional Crypto Trading

Anchorage Digital has announced an integration with Binance to bring off-exchange settlement to institutional crypto traders, giving clients access to the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume without surrendering custody of their assets.

The partnership, powered by Atlas — Anchorage Digital’s suite of settlement infrastructure — marks the first off-exchange settlement implementation within that platform. Under the arrangement, institutions can trade on Binance while their assets remain in segregated custody at Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States.

The structure mirrors how institutional trading works in traditional financial markets, where custody and execution are kept separate. In those markets, assets are held with a custodian and transferred only at final settlement — never sitting on the balance sheet of the trading venue. Crypto has long lacked that separation, requiring institutions to pre-fund exchange accounts and accept counterparty exposure to the venue itself.

“Institutions need crypto market structure that reflects the standards they already rely on in traditional finance,” said Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital in a note to Bitcoin Magazine. “Off-Exchange Settlement, powered by Atlas, is designed to separate custody from execution, helping institutions access exchange liquidity while keeping assets in secure custody.”

The arrangement also allows institutions to pledge both crypto assets and USD accounts as collateral, enabling capital deployment while satisfying trading margin requirements — an approach consistent with workflows at traditional financial firms.

Binance has been building out its institutional infrastructure over the past several years, expanding triparty banking and collateral management offerings for professional clients. The Anchorage Digital integration extends that effort.

“Working with Anchorage Digital gives institutional clients another way to access Binance liquidity while managing custody and collateral through a model that is more familiar to traditional financial markets,” said Catherine Chen, Head of VIP & Institutional at Binance.

Crypto adoption and off-exchange settlement

Atlas is designed to support a range of institutional workflows beyond off-exchange settlement, including trading, lending, collateral management, and other capital markets functions. 

Anchorage Digital says the platform is built for the current phase of institutional crypto adoption, where firms entering the market have compliance, custody, and operational requirements that earlier crypto infrastructure was not designed to meet.

Anchorage Digital is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, KKR, GIC, and Visa, and carries a valuation of $4.2 billion. 

In addition to Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., the company operates through Anchorage Digital Singapore, licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Anchorage Digital NY, which holds a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services.

This post Anchorage Digital and Binance Launch Off-Exchange Settlement for Institutional Crypto Trading first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.