Coinbase has urged Bitcoin to start preparing for quantum computers now instead of waiting for the threat to become real. The exchange holds about 5% of all bitcoin for its clients, so its voice carries more weight than a single developer's opinion. The document has three main ideas: flexible address formats, a backup quantum-resistant key and a separate conversation about coins nobody will ever move.
What exactly did Coinbase propose?
According to CoinDesk and The Block, the exchange published a list of priorities for moving Bitcoin to post-quantum signatures. It is not a ready-made manual. It is the position of one of the industry's largest custodians on where the discussion should head.
Why does a quantum computer threaten wallets?
Every wallet has a pair of keys. The public one can be shown to anyone, the private one is known only to the owner. When you send coins, the wallet creates a digital signature and the network checks it against the public key.
Bitcoin uses the ECDSA and Schnorr algorithms for this. Ordinary computers lack the power to recover a private key from a public one. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, and researchers call such a machine a CRQC, a cryptographically relevant quantum computer. According to Google researchers cited by CoinDesk, it could appear as early as 2029. For now it does not exist.
The cure is known: post-quantum cryptography, meaning new signature methods that quantum attacks cannot break. The difficulty is building them into a network that has no central operator.
What is in the Coinbase plan
The exchange did not pick a specific algorithm. It described the requirements a future transition has to meet.
- A flexible transaction format: the new address type should let signatures be added, replaced and combined without rebuilding the whole system. Coinbase names P2MR (BIP-360) and P2TRv2 among the candidates.
- Active wallets could move to hybrid signatures before Bitcoin settles its rules for old ones. Example: a "1-of-2" setup where coins can be spent with either a classic key or a post-quantum one.
- If the network adds stateful signatures, where a wallet must remember which one-time keys are already used, stateless options should sit next to them. Restoring from an old backup could reuse a key and let someone forge a signature.
- Implementations should behave the same on every platform, not leak secrets through timing and stay safe even if the random number generator fails.
There is also a requirement for multi-party computation (MPC): exchanges, custodians and large companies build key storage on it, so new signatures have to work with it.
What to do with coins nobody will move?
This is the sharpest part. If Bitcoin ever restricts spending under ECDSA and Schnorr, some old wallets will stay on an outdated format. That includes lost keys and owners who simply missed the window.
Coinbase suggests discussing it separately from the technical work, so the argument does not slow down the rollout of protection. The exchange openly calls the right approach and its trade-offs an open question. This is where the community will probably argue longest: freezing or seizing other people's coins, even abandoned ones, means changing the rules retroactively.
Why people say start now
Coinbase's argument is simple. Its paper says Bitcoin consensus changes and ecosystem migrations can take years, so work has to begin well ahead of any CRQC announcement. The decentralization people usually praise works against speed here.
What this means for bitcoin holders
Nothing changes in the near term. The network has no new address format, and BIP-360 is still a proposal. We at Kurslog follow the topic because the reaction of large custodians can shape how the market views risk.
If you plan to sell bitcoin for dollars, this breakdown does not change your plans. The quantum threat is still theoretical, but preparation starts now.
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