CZ said on a June 18 podcast that Bitcoin could give legacy holders 6 to 12 months to migrate after a quantum-resistant upgrade, with untouched coins potentially frozen under protocol rules, putting Satoshi's estimated 1.1 million BTC in focus.
Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp said he would prefer roughly 5.6 million likely lost BTC to be frozen by the network rather than recovered by future quantum attackers.
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.
Postquant Labs introduced the Quip wallet on Arch Network, saying it can add post-quantum protection to Bitcoin without a soft fork or protocol change. The launch lands as debate over Bitcoin’s quantum response grows more intense.
Bitcoin has climbed to its highest level since Feb. 4, 2026, but rising whale deposits to exchanges are drawing attention. Tim Draper renewed his $250,000 BTC target, while Grayscale and Kraken outlined crypto-finance and macro themes shaping the market.
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.
A new zero-knowledge recovery tool from Project Eleven offers a possible escape route for some Bitcoin holders before practical quantum attacks become a reality, but it does not solve the hardest part of the problem. The tool works only for HD wallets created after 2012, leaving older coins in early pay-to-public-key, or P2PK, addresses outside its reach. That includes roughly 1.1 million BTC widely associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, spread across about 22,000 addresses. According to the article, the real debate is no longer just about when quantum computers will become capable of breaking elliptic-curve signatures. It is about what the Bitcoin community should do with legacy coins that cannot be migrated through modern cryptographic methods. Several paths are on the table, including doing nothing, freezing vulnerable coins under proposals such as BIP-361, throttling spending from old addresses, or even redistributing dormant coins through a hard fork. Each option cuts against a different part of Bitcoin’s value proposition, from property rights to immutability. The report also says markets are starting to price in this governance risk. It cites Jefferies’ decision in January 2026 to remove a 10% Bitcoin allocation from its pension model portfolio, not because a quantum breakthrough had already happened, but because of uncertainty over how Bitcoin would handle early vulnerable coins.
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.
