Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi has rejected Ethereum researcher Justin Drake’s “bunker mode” warning, calling it “cryptographic doomerism” and arguing that moving tokens to fresh addresses is not a real answer if artificial intelligence can break cryptographic signatures.
In a Thursday post on X, Qureshi said “bunker mode” would only protect investors’ coins as long as they were never moved out of those fresh addresses. He added that such holdings would be “worthless if all of the other coins are being hacked and mass-sold.”
Qureshi said blockchain networks should take proactive steps instead of relying on address migration. He proposed a “Cryptographic Recovery Mode,” described as a hash-based backup signature plan that users could map to their addresses. If existing cryptographic signatures were broken, validators could then force a recovery process.
Glassnode says more than 31% of Bitcoin supply is exposed
The discussion comes with a large portion of Bitcoin already sitting in addresses considered vulnerable if AI models or quantum computers ever break cryptographic signatures. According to Glassnode, 6.26 million Bitcoin, or more than 31% of the BTC supply, are currently held in exposed addresses.
Glassnode co-founder Rafael Schultze-Kraft wrote in a Thursday X post that around 4.33 million BTC are exposed because of address reuse, and that moving those coins to fresh addresses would remove that specific exposure. Another 1.94 million BTC are exposed through their address format.
Of the total exposed supply, nearly 1.8 million BTC are held on cryptocurrency exchanges. Glassnode said 57% of all exchange balances are currently exposed.
Justin Drake says AI could break ECDSA sooner than expected
On Wednesday, Justin Drake warned that fast-moving AI progress in mathematics could break the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm, or ECDSA, that secures crypto wallets earlier than previously expected.
Citing a Tuesday OpenAI report on advances in AI mathematics, Drake wrote on X: “It is now reasonable to brace for the possibility that ECDSA breaks before qday, in the worst case, in months, not years.”
He advised users to gradually move funds into fresh wallets where the public key has not been exposed, saying AI progress may threaten those holdings before quantum computers do.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the industry should take risks from “AI-accelerated math seriously,” but added that he does not recommend users rush to move funds into fresh wallets.