A new position paper from the Coinbase Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain argues that crypto’s quantum threat is not immediate, but the migration work can no longer be treated as a distant problem. The report’s core message is straightforward: Bitcoin, Ethereum and the broader blockchain sector should be building post-quantum roadmaps now, not waiting for a fault-tolerant quantum computer to arrive.
Coinbase Puts Bitcoin And Ethereum Devs On NoticeStill, the report pushes hard against complacency. “Waiting for it to be urgent is not a good idea,” the authors write. “The discussion regarding quantum computing often revolves around the timeline. However, we believe that this debate on timelines is largely irrelevant (beyond that it is not imminent) since migrations should be planned for and prepared now.”
The advisory board argues that post-quantum protection is needed at both the consensus layer, where validators sign blocks, and the execution layer, where users sign transactions. The catch is that the cleanest cryptographic replacements are often much heavier than the elliptic-curve systems chains use today, especially once signature size, verification cost and aggregation are taken into account.
The Bitcoin section does not read like a call for panic. It notes that Grover’s algorithm is unlikely to hand quantum miners an edge over classical ASICs anytime soon, because the overhead of running the quantum search remains too high. But it does outline practical mitigation ideas, including a commit-reveal approach for spending pre-quantum UTXOs more safely and an “Hourglass” proposal that would cap spending of exposed P2PK outputs at 1 BTC per block, effectively turning dormant coins into a canary rather than an instant jackpot.
More broadly, the paper recommends staged migration rather than abrupt replacement. At the consensus layer, it proposes periodic post-quantum checkpoints that can anchor prior history even before a full switchover.
At the execution layer, it favors a “1-out-of-2” approach, where users can sign with either the current elliptic-curve scheme or a post-quantum scheme, allowing chains to keep today’s costs low while preserving the option to disable legacy signatures later. “We firmly believe that a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer will eventually be built,” the authors write. “This doesn’t mean that the threat is imminent… However, we believe that the time to begin preparing for it is now.”
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $77,974.
