TechFlow reported on June 13 that a Coinbase-led advisory council of cryptography experts has released a report saying Bitcoin should immediately begin preparing for the risk of future quantum computing attacks. The report does not take a definitive position on whether millions of bitcoins that could be stolen by quantum computing in the future should be frozen, leaving that question unresolved within the broader Bitcoin community.
The debate centers on unmigrated Bitcoin
The council includes several leading experts, among them Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake. According to the report, the most contested issue is not how to introduce quantum-resistant signature technology, but how Bitcoin should handle coins that remain unmigrated for a long period of time. This puts attention on the future treatment of Bitcoin’s existing ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes, as well as on whether assets that are not moved to a new signature format should continue to remain spendable.
One side of the debate calls for setting a final deadline. Under that approach, Bitcoin’s current ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes would stop being supported after the deadline, and assets that had not been migrated would be frozen. Supporters of this view argue that such a measure would prevent future quantum attackers from obtaining a large amount of BTC and disrupting the market.
The opposing view is that freezing legacy coins would amount to asset confiscation. Critics argue that this would violate Bitcoin’s core principles of immutability and full user control over assets. They also argue that such a decision would create a precedent for freezing assets in the future under regulatory pressure.
The council leaves the final decision to Bitcoin governance
The Coinbase advisory council said these approaches are not mutually exclusive and can be combined. However, it declined to state whether legacy BTC should be frozen. The council said the final decision should be made through Bitcoin community governance, rather than being decided by the advisory group itself.
At the same time, the council emphasized two specific points. First, technical development for quantum-resistant signature migration should start immediately and should not wait for governance disputes to be resolved. Second, risk information must be communicated clearly to users so that long-term uncertainty does not affect the Bitcoin ecosystem. The report therefore separates urgent technical preparation from the still-unsettled governance question over how to handle unmigrated BTC.