Brian Armstrong says a quantum computer won’t break Bitcoin anytime soon. His company is helping fund and plan a multiyear effort to prepare for the threat.
On October 13, Coinbase publicly pressed Bitcoin’s core developers to start a multiyear migration to quantum-resistant cryptography now, not after a quantum computer capable of cracking the network’s encryption actually shows up. According to a report from Decrypt, Coinbase laid out requirements spanning block space, custody systems and the millions of dormant coins sitting in old-style addresses. It warned that waiting for the announcement of a so-called cryptographically relevant quantum computer would leave too little runway to respond. Ethan Heilman, co-author of the Bitcoin proposal Coinbase is backing, estimates the full migration takes at least seven years even if the industry starts today.
That urgency sits oddly next to what Coinbase’s own CEO has been telling the public. Brian Armstrong has spent most of 2026 talking quantum computing down. In a CNBC interview earlier this year, he called it “a very solvable issue”. He said Coinbase is already “front-footed,” adding that the exchange stays “in regular contact with the major blockchains about a path to upgrade to a post-quantum cryptography world.” No panic, in other words. Just, apparently, a lot of quiet preparation.
You don’t staff an advisory board with Scott Aaronson and Dan Boneh if you think the problem is trivial. Aaronson is one of the most cited theoretical computer scientists working on quantum computing; Boneh is a Stanford cryptographer whose work underpins a chunk of modern encryption. Coinbase put both of them on an independent Quantum Computing and Blockchain Advisory Board earlier this year, alongside Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, specifically to map migration paths for Bitcoin and other chains.
Bitcoin and Ethereum both secure wallets with elliptic-curve signatures. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, in theory, run Shor’s algorithm against an exposed public key and derive the private key behind it, then move the coins out from under their owner. That’s the scenario people shorthand as “Q-Day.” It isn’t hypothetical hand-waving: Google set 2029 as the deadline for completing its own migration to post-quantum cryptography, a marker the crypto industry has started treating as a soft clock.
The exposure isn’t evenly spread. Glassnode measured 6.04 million BTC with public-key exposure at rest in May, while separate analysis from CoinShares researcher Christopher Bendiksen focused on just 10,230 BTC held in address brackets he considered both attractive to attack and practical to liquidate. The gap between those figures reflects different definitions of exposure and economically useful targets. Many older Pay-to-Public-Key coins have remained dormant for years, complicating any migration plan for assets whose owners may no longer have access to them.
The fix Coinbase is backing is BIP-360, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal that introduces a new output type called Pay-to-Merkle-Root. Instead of revealing a public key on-chain the way current addresses do, P2MR commits to a script through a Merkle root. It is designed as a flexible container that lets Bitcoin swap in post-quantum signature schemes over time rather than forcing one all-at-once rewrite of the protocol.
Money is already moving, not just proposals
Coinbase isn’t carrying this alone, and it isn’t the first mover either. Galaxy Digital committed up to $5 million in July toward a Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative, funding developer grants and an advisory council of its own. Days later, on July 23, Strategy and BlackRock launched the Bitcoin Security Consortium with Coinbase, Galaxy, Fidelity Digital Assets, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block and Blockstream as founding members. The group pledged a combined $15 million over three years toward research into Bitcoin’s long-term security, with post-quantum cryptography named as the first priority.
Strategy holds more Bitcoin on its balance sheet than almost any other public company. BlackRock runs the largest Bitcoin ETF in the world. Neither needed to put money behind a threat that’s purely theoretical. Frankly, that’s the tell that matters more than anything Armstrong says in an interview: institutions that have real custody exposure, not just a PR position, are funding the fix years ahead of the problem.
Ethereum is running its own version of this. The Ethereum Foundation formed a dedicated team to coordinate its transition to post-quantum security, and Vitalik Buterin has since mapped out a roadmap that includes replacing validator and wallet signatures with quantum-resistant alternatives. Neither chain is close to shipping a final answer. Both are moving well before they’d need to.
Bitcoin isn’t in danger this year, or next year, or probably for several years after that. But the people with the most to lose are the ones moving: the exchange that says it holds around 12% of all Bitcoin in existence, the asset manager running the biggest Bitcoin fund on the planet, the company with the largest corporate treasury in the asset. They have all decided seven years of lead time is not a number worth testing.
Also read: Binance seeks a Malaysia license five years after regulators banned it • Strategy posted a record $19 billion profit and the market shrugged • NYSE Owner ICE Strikes Deal to Bring Hyperliquid Perps to the US
The Metropolix, from Startup Fortune
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