Led by Jameson Lopp, Bitcoin developers propose a phased freeze of legacy wallet addresses to counter quantum threats, targeting ~1.7M BTC. Critics argue forced upgrades conflict with Bitcoin principles.

Alex Pruden said Bitcoin should stop waiting for certainty on quantum timelines and move toward a production-ready post-quantum signature scheme. He warned the migration would be broader and harder than Taproot, involving holders, wallets, exchanges, and institutions across the network.

Project Eleven awarded 1 BTC to independent researcher Giancarlo Lelli for breaking a 15-bit elliptic curve key on publicly accessible quantum hardware, the largest public demonstration so far of this attack class.

BitGo and Silence Laboratories completed a post-quantum MPC transaction simulation using the NIST-standard ML-DSA algorithm for institutional crypto custody. The test comes as BitGo prepares for a $200M IPO and as the industry gears up for quantum-resistant upgrades.

Galaxy Digital has launched a Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative with up to $5 million in developer grants, a research track, and a new advisory council focused on post-quantum security for the Bitcoin network. The company said the effort is aimed at preparing for the eventual arrival of powerful quantum computers that could break the elliptic curve cryptography used by Bitcoin. Galaxy expects to begin accepting grant applications immediately. The advisory council’s first members are Barry Sanders of the University of Calgary, MIT Sea Grant Knauss Fellow Damien Bérubé, and Boston University computer science professor Eran Tromer. Galaxy founder and CEO Mike Novogratz said the firm wants to be part of the response to any threat quantum computing may pose to Bitcoin. The launch comes as warnings about “Q-Day” intensify. Project Eleven said in May that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is more likely than not by 2033, possibly as early as 2030, and estimated that about 6.9 million BTC sit in quantum-exposed addresses. In June, Coinbase’s quantum advisory council put the vulnerable supply at around 7 million BTC and urged developers to start migration work. That same month, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders tied to U.S. quantum capabilities and a December 2031 federal deadline for post-quantum cryptography.

Project Eleven has introduced a proposed Bitcoin recovery mechanism for a post-quantum scenario in which digital signatures can no longer reliably prove wallet ownership. The security firm argues that the real problem after “Q-Day” is not only that quantum computers may derive private keys from public keys, but that both attackers and legitimate holders could then produce equally valid signatures. Its answer is a derivation-based proof tied to a wallet’s key derivation path, allowing a user to prove control of the parent key used to generate a wallet’s private key without revealing that parent key itself. According to CEO Alex Pruden, that distinction would remain meaningful even if the address private key had already been compromised. The proposal was developed with Binius lead maintainer Jim Posen and builds on a method called “signature lifting,” first proposed by Alon Sattath and Robert Wyborski. The company frames the mechanism as a fallback for users who miss a future migration to quantum-safe addresses, at a time when work on Bitcoin’s post-quantum preparedness is moving ahead through BIP-360, BTQ Technologies’ testnet work, and warnings from Coinbase’s quantum advisory council.

IOSG argues that quantum computing is not a doomsday button for cryptocurrencies, but it does pose a serious long-term threat to the cryptographic foundations of Web3. In a reposted article by 0xjacobzhao, the firm says the real danger is not that blockchains suddenly stop working, but that a cryptographically capable fault-tolerant quantum computer could derive private keys from already exposed public keys and produce valid signatures on-chain. That would put extreme pressure on three core properties of public blockchains: permanently public ledgers, irreversible asset transfers, and self-custodied private keys. The article says the industry’s problem is no longer a lack of post-quantum cryptography. Instead, the hard part is coordination. Bitcoin and Ethereum face different migration problems: Bitcoin must deal with exposed legacy UTXOs, signature-size expansion, and governance disputes over dormant coins, while Ethereum is working on a broader migration across accounts, validator signatures, data availability, and zero-knowledge systems. IOSG points to a 5 to 8 year “engineering comfort window” before quantum risk becomes much harder to manage, even though broader Q-Day estimates remain centered around 2035 to 2045, with faster scenarios falling in the 2030 to 2035 range.

Bitcoin's BIP-360 introduces P2MR outputs to bolster quantum resistance. Analyst James Van Straten predicts a 50-100% price revaluation after consensus, while Satoshi's dormant coins face uncertainty.