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Bitcoin’s Quantum Computing Problem: Are Developers Finally Preparing for It?

ME
BY MEGASLEY
Verified Contributor
| 3H AGO | 3 MIN READ |
DEVELOPMENT INFRASTUCTURE SECURITY

The short answer is yes. Bitcoin developers, researchers, and some of the industry’s biggest firms spent 2026 preparing for a future quantum computer. The longer answer matters more: no fix has been agreed, and nothing has been activated on Bitcoin.

Blockstream’s Q3 2026 update, published November 5, says the company “took post-quantum signatures from a Liquid deployment to a draft Bitcoin proposal.” That is real progress. It is also a long way from a deployed upgrade.

Blockstream is both the source and a stakeholder here, since its researchers authored the leading signature proposal. So this article cross-checks its claims against independent reporting.

The threat in one minute

Bitcoin signs transactions with two schemes, ECDSA and Schnorr. Today’s computers cannot work backwards from a public key to the private key. A large enough quantum computer, called a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC), could.

No such machine exists today. Estimates of when one might arrive vary widely. CoinDesk reported that Google researchers have suggested 2029. Another outlet describes a March 2026 Google paper as shrinking the planning window to 2030 to 2035. Nobody can give a date with confidence.

The exposure is already large. Glassnode research from May 2026 found that more than 6 million BTC, roughly 30% of supply, sits in addresses where the public key is already visible on-chain.

What has actually happened in 2026

February 11: BIP-360 enters the repository. The proposal, called Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), was merged into the official BIPs repository as a draft. Its authors are Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Isabel Foxen Duke. It creates a new output type without Taproot’s key-path spend. It does not add a post-quantum signature scheme, and it does not move anyone’s coins.

August 26: the first SHRINCS draft BIP. A working group posted the first concrete post-quantum signature proposal designed for Bitcoin to the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list. Bitcoin Optech covered it in Newsletter #421. According to TokenPost, the draft specifies a 48-byte public key, stateful signatures from 548 to 4,619 bytes, and a 5,777-byte stateless signature. Reviewers describe its security work as unfinished.

Blockstream’s research results:

  • A search of 25,935 parameter sets found signature options about 25% smaller than the NIST SLH-DSA standard, with a reduced signature budget and 28% cheaper verification.
  • A C implementation called libshrincs ships with machine-checked proofs of correctness and security.
  • Hardware wallets can already sign. Benchmarks on Jade Plus, Trezor Safe 3, 5, and 7, two Ledger devices, and BitBox02 Nova all produced hash-based post-quantum signatures. A compact 324-byte signature from an earlier design took about 22 to 42 seconds, with Jade Plus fastest at 21.75 seconds.
  • A report on lattice-based signatures names Falcon-1024 as a strong future candidate once NIST finalises its standard.

July: the money arrives. Galaxy announced up to $5 million for a Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative on July 21. Two days later, nine firms launched the Bitcoin Security Consortium with $15 million in pledges over three years: Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Galaxy, and Strategy. Members fund developers independently, and the group is structured to avoid any perception of influence over Bitcoin’s development.

October: Coinbase weighs in. As ABN reported, Coinbase urged Bitcoin to start preparing now, pointing to flexible address formats, staged adoption, and a separate debate over dormant coins.

What has not happened

  • BIP-360 is still a draft. The canonical document was still marked Draft when reviewed in September, and it would need a soft fork to activate.
  • SHRINCS has no adoption path yet. Deploying it would require its own proposal to change Bitcoin’s consensus rules.
  • No migration timetable exists. As of late October, no signature scheme or schedule has been adopted.

Time scales are long. One analyst roadmap assumes legacy outputs could not be sunset until roughly five years after BIP-360 activates. That is an assumption, not a plan, but it shows why developers say the work must start before the threat is visible.

The hard problems still open

Signature size. A Schnorr signature is 64 bytes. The stateless SHRINCS signature is 5,777 bytes. Bigger signatures mean less room for transactions and higher fees.

State. Stateful schemes are smaller but dangerous. If a wallet restores from an old backup and reuses a signing key, an attacker can forge signatures.

Dormant coins. Some owners will never migrate, because they lost their keys or are gone. Proposals to restrict or freeze coins that never move are the most contentious part of the debate. Coinbase asked that it be handled separately so it does not delay protection for everyone else.

Urgency. The consortium’s own members disagree on how soon the threat is real, according to Bitcoin Magazine.

What African Bitcoin users and builders should do

Nothing urgent, but a few habits are worth building now:

  1. Never reuse addresses. Spending from an address reveals its public key, so reuse leaves remaining funds exposed.
  2. Prefer fresh addresses from a modern wallet. Legacy coins that already expose public keys are the largest pool of risk.
  3. Keep wallet software and firmware updated. Hardware makers have shown they can ship post-quantum signing, and updates are how it will arrive.
  4. Use backups carefully. Stateful signature schemes make backup discipline more important.

For developers, the review work is open to anyone. BIP-360 and the SHRINCS draft need testing, benchmarking, and adversarial review, and Lightning will inherit whatever the base layer adopts. Programs like Btrust Builders and Africa Free Routing’s bootcamps are producing the contributors this kind of work needs. With consortium and Galaxy funding available, watch for grants.

The verdict

Is Bitcoin preparing? Yes. There are specifications, reference code, testnets, hardware benchmarks, and nine-figure industry attention. Is Bitcoin ready? No. There is no agreed design, no activation, and no migration plan.

The people doing the work are saying the same thing: preparation consumes real time while the threat date stays uncertain. The quantum computer is not the long pole. Bitcoin’s own upgrade process is.

Sources

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