Galaxy Digital, a publicly traded crypto and data-center company founded by Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz, is committing up to $5 million to developers working on ways to protect Bitcoin from quantum computers.
But the money may be aimed at the easier half of the problem. The Galaxy Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative will fund quantum-resistant transaction proposals, new signature systems, migration tools for wallets and custodians, and security audits, the New York-based company said in a Tuesday blog post.
- Galaxy will evaluate applications individually and release the money in stages as developers reach agreed milestones.
- No recipients or individual grant sizes have been announced yet.
As of press time, no publicly known quantum computer can break Bitcoin. Still, fears intensified in late March, when Google set 2029 as its deadline to adopt quantum-safe security — six years ahead of the broader 2035 U.S. government target — after researchers estimated that breaking Bitcoin-style encryption could require about 20 times less computing power than previously believed.
- New transaction types could eventually give active holders somewhere safer to move their coins.
- The much uglier question is what Bitcoin should do with coins whose owners can't be found, have lost their keys or simply refuse to migrate.
Galaxy Research previously cited an estimate from Project Eleven, a quantum-security research group, that roughly 7 million BTC may have publicly exposed keys under a broad definition.
The figure includes reused addresses, some custodian wallets and older address formats associated with early mining, potentially including coins attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator.
Other researchers have produced lower estimates, and none of the coins are vulnerable to publicly available machines today.
- A June academic study estimated that only about 2.3 million of roughly 6 million exposed BTC may be impossible to protect through an ordinary migration. It concluded that Bitcoin's binding constraint is likely to be governance rather than technology.
How can Bitcoin protect itself from quantum computing
All the available choices are unpleasant. Developers could potentially freeze or make vulnerable coins unspendable after a deadline, protecting them from quantum thieves but potentially confiscating funds from legitimate owners.
- They could also leave the rules unchanged and risk attackers stealing and dumping dormant BTCs.
- Another proposal, known as Hourglass, would instead limit how quickly vulnerable coins could move, potentially reducing the market shock without permanently destroying them.
Galaxy Digital's announcement doesn't take a position on that fight. Its inaugural Quantum Advisory Council includes Barry Sanders, a University of Calgary quantum-computing professor, Damien Bérubé, an MIT Sea Grant Knauss Fellow, and Eran Tromer, a Boston University cryptography professor.
None was identified by Galaxy Digital as a Bitcoin protocol developer, though the company said the council would evaluate grants and help bridge the gap between quantum researchers and Bitcoin's developer community.