Bitcoin Magazine

Coinbase Builds Post-Quantum Custody System, Funds Bitcoin’s Crypto Upgrade

Coinbase is preparing for future scenarios where quantum computers may be able to crack Bitcoin’s current cryptography.

America’s biggest crypto exchange said Thursday that while the threat isn’t imminent, hard problems — such as migrating millions of users and coordinating protocol upgrades across decentralized systems — need to be solved. 

Quantum computers are still experimental and make mistakes but some in the crypto community have sounded the alarm about hypothetical advancements in the machines that could in the future be able to break Bitcoin’s cryptography. 

“There’s a lot of noise about quantum computing right now,” Coinbase said. “Some of it is hype. Some of it is fear. And some of it is real.”

The publicly-listed company added that a large-scale quantum computer capable of breaking current cryptography will eventually be built, and so the work to prepare needs to start now, “not when it’s urgent.”

The gameplan

The exchange added that its Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain, formed earlier this year, plans to deliver a post-quantum signing pipeline using secure enclaves and threshold cryptography.

Coinbase said that currently, its key management system protects approximately 99.9% of the assets the company custodies. But within the next year, the company will deliver an automated signing pipeline that will allow quantum-safe custody as soon as blockchains begin adopting post-quantum schemes.

It added that it was bringing together Bitcoin core developers, cryptographers and researchers to discuss post-quantum migration strategy, with plans to continue these regularly.

“Preparing Bitcoin for a post-quantum world is one of the most consequential and complex challenges the protocol has ever faced,” the exchange said. 

Coinbase is also a founding member of the new Bitcoin Security Consortium — alongside BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, Block, and others — which donates funds and dedicates engineers to open-source work supporting proposals like BIP-360.

The quantum “threat”

Crypto companies and protocols have been planning for a hypothetical future where quantum computers can break top cryptography ever since Google researchers last year said that improvements in the computers may allow them to be able to break the cryptography protecting major cryptocurrencies in just nine minutes.

Some in the community have called the warnings overblown, but others have already started preparing for a post-quantum future by testing quantum-resistant signatures on live sidechains. 

This post Coinbase Builds Post-Quantum Custody System, Funds Bitcoin’s Crypto Upgrade first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

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BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy Among Nine Firms Launching the Bitcoin Security Consortium, Pledging $15 Million To BTC Security Development

Nine of the largest names in institutional Bitcoin launched the Bitcoin Security Consortium on Thursday, a group backed by $15 million in member pledges over three years to fund work on the network’s long-term security, including preparation for a future era of quantum computing.

Founding members are Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Galaxy, and Strategy, a lineup that spans holders, custodians, exchanges, infrastructure and payments providers, and asset managers. 

The consortium’s day-to-day work falls to Mike Schmidt, executive director of the developer non-profit Brink, who serves in a volunteer role.

Schmidt tweeted about the role, saying, “I said yes because supporting Bitcoin’s developers and helping people understand their work are the two things I’ve spent my time in Bitcoin on, through Brink and Optech. This group wants to do both: fund the people already securing Bitcoin, and bring accurate information about that work to audiences it doesn’t currently reach.”

Each member directs its own funding to the developers, researchers, and organizations it chooses; the $15 million figure is an aggregate of independent pledges rather than a pooled fund. The group also plans to serve as a reference point on Bitcoin’s security for investors, the public, and the media, and to publish material it will update as the field develops.

Funding advocates

The consortium drew clear limits around its role. It says it does not develop or direct Bitcoin’s protocol, takes no position on specific protocol changes, and does not speak for Bitcoin or its developers.

It casts itself on the model of industry groups that fund the open-source software they rely on without controlling the work. 

“Bitcoin’s development is, and will remain, the work of a global, decentralized community of contributors,” the group said.

“As long-term holders, we have every incentive to see Bitcoin remain secure for generations,” said Phong Le, Chief Executive Officer of Strategy. “Funding the people who do this work, and helping inform the conversation around it, is a natural way for us to contribute.” 

Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock’s Global Head of Digital Assets, said Bitcoin Core developers “do incredibly important work,” and that the members would make “significant additional funding available to support Bitcoin’s long-term security needs.”

Brink, the non-profit coordinating the effort, has funded open-source Bitcoin work since 2020, including more than $1 million to developers in a single year and the first third-party security audit of Bitcoin Core. Schmidt co-founded the group with developer John Newbery.

Bitcoin and quantum 

Much of the consortium’s stated focus lands on the quantum question. Large-scale quantum computers able to break BTC’s cryptography do not exist today, and credible estimates place such capability years out. 

The group frames post-quantum protection as a long-term priority the technical community already works on, and positions itself as a grounded source as that work moves.

That framing matches a wider institutional turn toward the issue. Coinbase has formed a quantum computing advisory board, Galaxy launched its own quantum readiness initiative with developer grants days before, and BlackRock has listed quantum computing as a risk in its spot BTC ETF filings. 

Developers, for their part, have proposed migration plans built on schemes such as BIP-360 that would move coins to quantum-resistant addresses, and the Bitcoin Policy Institute has warned the timeline is compressing.

Views on urgency diverge, a split the consortium’s members embody. Adam Back, founder of member firm Blockstream, has called the quantum threat decades away, while other voices place a capable machine within the next several years. 

The stakes are large either way, since Coinbase research has estimated that between 20% and 50% of BTC’s supply, much of it in older wallet formats, could face exposure to a long-range quantum attack. 

The consortium sidesteps the timeline debate and stakes its role on funding and information rather than a forecast. Its own summary holds that the risk is real, yet the network is preparing.

This post BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy Among Nine Firms Launching the Bitcoin Security Consortium, Pledging $15 Million To BTC Security Development first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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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.

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BitGo Adds Quantum-Risk Controls to Bitcoin Custody

BitGo Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BTGO) introduced a set of tools to help institutions measure and reduce the quantum-computing risk tied to their Bitcoin holdings. The digital asset infrastructure company said the features apply to UTXO-based wallets and its multi-signature custody service.

The release builds on BitGo’s multi-signature architecture, which the firm pioneered for Bitcoin to reduce single points of failure. The new controls give clients more visibility into wallet-key exposure, better handling of unspent transaction outputs, and workflows for institutional wallet operations.

At the center of the launch is a Quantum Risk Score, an in-platform system that rates potential quantum exposure across supported Bitcoin wallets. A Fix Exposed Addresses Workflow guides clients through moving funds from addresses with elevated exposure into new addresses with stronger key hygiene. 

A new UTXO Selection Method groups and prioritizes coins by address to limit the exposure that partial spends create. Updated default address-type controls steer wallets away from transaction patterns that raise quantum concerns.

Bitcoin could face quantum attacks

The risk stems from how Bitcoin addresses work. An address whose public key has appeared on-chain could, in a future with capable quantum machines, face attack. 

Estimates place 6.9 million Bitcoin in addresses with exposed public keys. Funds in address types that reveal a public key from creation, such as Taproot or Pay-to-Public-Key, fall outside the scope of the application and need separate remediation.

“We believe the safest key is one whose public key has never been revealed on-chain,” said Mike Belshe, CEO and co-founder of BitGo. “These capabilities give institutions a practical way to understand and reduce quantum exposure while continuing to rely on the proven security of multi-signature.”

BitGo said no quantum computer can break Bitcoin at present. Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream and BSTR, framed the timing as a reason to act. “Nobody has a quantum computer that can touch Bitcoin today, but that’s exactly why the work should start now, while it’s calm and optional rather than urgent and forced,” he said.

The company described the tools as a complement to future protocol-level post-quantum signature upgrades to Bitcoin, rather than a replacement. 

The features cover supported UTXO-based assets and multi-signature configurations.

This post BitGo Adds Quantum-Risk Controls to Bitcoin Custody first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Moody’s Flags Quantum Threat to Bitcoin and Digital Assets After Trump Orders

A pair of executive orders signed by President Trump on June 22 has pushed the quantum computing question from the research lab into the boardrooms of crypto exchanges, custodians and stablecoin issuers. 

In a June 24 sector comment, Moody’s Ratings warned that the credit implications for digital assets are significant, and that the industry now faces pressure to prove it can defend the cryptography at its foundation.

The orders make quantum computing and its security a strategic national priority. One directs the development of a quantum computer “powerful enough to initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery,” with system specifications due within 90 days. 

A second accelerates the federal migration to post-quantum cryptography, moving preparedness deadlines to 2030-31 from the prior 2035 target. 

That four-year jump is the detail crypto builders should note.

Moody’s frames the risk in stark terms for public blockchains. Bitcoin relies on public-key cryptography to secure ownership, authorize transactions and manage core infrastructure. A sufficiently capable quantum computer could break the elliptic-curve signatures that guard private keys. 

Unlike a bank wire, an on-chain transaction offers limited ability to reverse a theft or recover funds. As the analysts put it, compromised keys “may lead to immediate and irreversible on-chain outcomes.”

The finality that makes Bitcoin trustless also removes the safety net.

Moody’s: There is a 2030 deadline for a decentralized network

The near-term danger is not a working quantum machine but a strategy called “harvest now, decrypt later.” Adversaries capture encrypted data today and store it for the day a capable machine arrives, an event the industry calls “Q-Day.” 

For Bitcoin, dormant wallets and reused addresses with exposed public keys form a standing target. Satoshi-era coins, held in early pay-to-public-key outputs, sit among the most exposed.

Moody’s expects market participants to face growing demand for “cryptographic agility,” the ability to inventory, update and replace vulnerable algorithms without severe disruption. 

The firm suggests exchanges, custodians and tokenization platforms will need migration paths toward quantum-resistant standards, plus honest assessments of the exposure in existing wallets, custody arrangements and smart contracts.

There is a credit-rating logic underneath the warning. Institutions that present credible quantum transition plans, Moody’s argues, stand better positioned to win adoption from regulated financial players and to satisfy rising supervisory expectations on cyber resilience. 

For a sector courting Wall Street and pension money, quantum readiness becomes a gatekeeping requirement rather than a distant science project.

For Bitcoin, the technical fix exists in the form of proposed quantum-resistant signature schemes, but adoption demands consensus, soft forks and coordinated wallet migration across a decentralized network. That is the harder problem. Moody’s has now put a date on the deadline, and the clock reads 2030.

This post Moody’s Flags Quantum Threat to Bitcoin and Digital Assets After Trump Orders first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.