Coinbase says Bitcoin developers should begin planning for post-quantum security now, while keeping signature choices adaptable and separating technical work from disputes over inaccessible coins.
Coinbase is urging Bitcoin developers and businesses to start planning for a post-quantum transition years before a cryptographically relevant quantum computer becomes a practical threat. Its technical priorities, published October 13, favor designs that can accommodate changing signature systems rather than locking Bitcoin into a single cryptographic choice.
The exchange stressed that preparing Bitcoin involves more than selecting a quantum-resistant signature. Any approach would need to protect newly created and already exposed funds, fit within the network’s limited block space, preserve independent validation by full nodes and work for both ordinary wallets and institutional custody systems. Coinbase also said the community must consider coins whose owners cannot or will not migrate.
The paper is an invitation to an open technical discussion, not a roadmap or approved protocol change. As BlockchainReporter reported October 14, BIP-360 remains in Draft status, while P2TRv2 is inactive and has no BIP of its own. Neither label should be read as evidence that Bitcoin has adopted a post-quantum upgrade.
Coinbase’s central design preference is to separate an output’s “container” from the signature scheme used to spend it. That separation could allow signature systems to be added, replaced or combined without redesigning the output type each time. The company pointed to P2MR and P2TRv2 as constructions that appear to offer this kind of flexibility, while recognizing that the designs are at different stages of development.
The distinction matters because a post-quantum transition is likely to involve difficult trade-offs. Bitcoin’s existing ECDSA and Schnorr signatures are not post-quantum cryptography. Coinbase described staged protection as one possible way for active wallets to adopt a post-quantum-capable or hybrid construction before the network settles the longer-term treatment of older signatures. Its paper discussed an option with separate classical and post-quantum spending paths for the same funds, but that remains a proposal for consideration, not a deployed mechanism.
Coinbase also called for evaluation of several candidate signature families: ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, FN-DSA and SHRINCS. It argued that any consideration of stateful signatures should include a stateless alternative. Stateful systems require careful management of signing state; mishandling or reusing that state can create forgery risks, the company said.
Institutional custody presents another implementation test. Coinbase said at least one viable post-quantum option should be compatible with multiparty computation, or MPC, a technique used to distribute key operations among participants. The exchange described MPC as an important defense layer for large organizations. That requirement reflects a practical point often lost in cryptography debates: a mathematically sound signature scheme still must work securely in the systems that hold and use funds.
The hardest policy question may concern dormant, abandoned or otherwise inaccessible bitcoin. Coinbase said the issue deserves a parallel debate, but did not endorse a rescue mechanism or deadline. That leaves open whether and how the network should treat funds that cannot move before future protections are introduced—an issue with consequences for property rights as well as security.
Coinbase said consensus changes and ecosystem migrations can take years, making early preparation prudent even without a known timetable for quantum capability. The company’s paper does not establish that such a computer is imminent, nor does it settle which proposal Bitcoin should adopt. It instead frames the work as a long-running engineering and governance process, with decentralized developers, wallet makers, custodians and users facing decisions that cannot be resolved by choosing a signature algorithm alone.
Ryan Mitchell serves as a Staff Writer for Just Right News, where he anchors the desk for Cyber, Technology Policy, and Digital Sovereignty. In an era where the digital landscape has become as much a battlefield as any physical territory, Ryan provides a critical conservative lens on the forces shaping the future of American innovation and national security. His work is defined by a commitment to the idea that American leadership in the digital age is not just a matter of economic success, but a necessity for the preservation of global liberty.
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