Coinbase Publishes Its Case for a Phased Bitcoin Post-Quantum Migration

Bitcoin does not face an imminent quantum break, by Coinbase’s own account. The company says the most advanced quantum machines have fewer than 1,000 qubits, far short of the fault-tolerant capability needed to break Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve cryptography. Yet Coinbase estimates that a change to Bitcoin’s signature system could take as long as seven years to implement. That gap is the essential point of its post-quantum case. The issue is not whether a quantum computer can steal bitcoin today. It is whether Bitcoin can agree on, build and deploy a migration before a future machine makes the question urgent. Coinbase argues that preparation must begin beforehand, because the transition would involve developers, custodians, wallet providers, hardware-wallet makers and institutions rather than a single software activation.

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