According to TechFlow, on June 13, a Coinbase-led advisory council of cryptography experts released a report saying Bitcoin should immediately begin preparing for the risk of quantum computing attacks. The council did not take a clear position on whether millions of bitcoins that could be stolen by future quantum computing capabilities should eventually be frozen.
The debate centers on unmigrated bitcoin
The council includes several leading experts, including Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake. In the report, the group said the central dispute is not how to introduce quantum-resistant signature technology, but how Bitcoin should deal with coins that remain unmoved for a long period after any new migration path is available.
One side of the debate calls for a final deadline. Under that approach, Bitcoin’s existing ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes would no longer be supported after the deadline, and assets that had not migrated would be frozen. Supporters argue this would prevent future quantum attackers from obtaining a large amount of BTC and disrupting the market.
The opposing view is that such a freeze would amount to confiscation of assets. Critics argue that it would run against Bitcoin’s core principles of immutability and users’ full control over their own assets. They also say it could create a precedent for freezing assets in the future under regulatory pressure.
Technical preparation and governance are separated
The Coinbase advisory council said the proposed approaches are not mutually exclusive and could be combined. However, it declined to decide the question of whether legacy BTC should be frozen, saying the final decision should come from Bitcoin community governance rather than from the council itself.
The report emphasized two recommendations. First, technical development for quantum-resistant signature migration should begin immediately and should not wait for governance disputes to be resolved. Second, users need to receive clear risk information so that prolonged uncertainty does not affect the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the council’s framing, engineering preparation should start now, while the community continues to determine how legacy assets should be handled.