Coinbase has published a position paper urging the Bitcoin ecosystem to begin post-quantum migration preparations now. The exchange says consensus changes, wallet upgrades and coordination could take years. It lays out seven technical priorities.
Coinbase urged the Bitcoin ecosystem to start migration preparations now, well before any quantum computer poses a real cryptographic threat. The exchange, which custodies roughly 5% of all Bitcoin, warns that consensus changes, wallet upgrades and ecosystem coordination could take years.
Waiting for a confirmed threat, Coinbase argues, would leave too little time for an orderly transition.
Coinbase outlines seven priorities for Bitcoin's quantum future
In its blog post, Coinbase author Shashank Agrawal lays out seven technical priorities for the community. According to Coinbase, the process is "challenging, complex, and multi-year."
Central to the proposal is a flexible output design that separates the output "container" from the signature scheme. This way, new post-quantum algorithms could be swapped in or supplemented without a full protocol redesign. Coinbase points to BIP-360 (P2MR) and P2TRv2 as early constructions worth building on.
For active wallets, Coinbase favors a staged, hybrid approach. A 1-of-2 construction, for example, would let either a classical ECDSA key or a post-quantum key spend funds, so holders could migrate gradually.
The proposal also flags institutional custody concerns. Coinbase stresses that at least one post-quantum scheme must be compatible with multi-party computation (MPC). On candidate schemes, it names ML-DSA, SLH-DSA and FN-DSA, alongside the compact SHRINCS.
Industry pressure on quantum risk builds
The post lands as pressure on Bitcoin post-quantum readiness intensifies. In July 2026, Coinbase co-founded the Bitcoin Security Consortium with BlackRock, Strategy and ARK Invest, pledging $15 million over three years to fund open-source quantum security research.
Regulators have added to the urgency. The EU flagged post-quantum migration as a systemic risk for crypto in late September, while Europol warned that wallets are the primary vulnerability.
Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin, meanwhile, warned that AI could accelerate attacks on lattice-based, quantum-resistant schemes within two years. Zcash developers, for their part, moved to target quantum-resistant payments by January 2027.
Source: CoinGape
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