Coinbase CSO convened Bitcoin Core developers to a quantum working group.
Samson Mow pointed out that Armstrong’s last intervention in BTC led to the Block Wars.
Quantum computing is no longer an abstract threat to Bitcoin. The recent Google Quantum AI report, which reduced the resources needed to break the cryptography that protects Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions by almost 20 times, accelerated the debate about the imminence of ‘Q-day’, that day in which quantum hardware could potentially break digital systems.
In that context, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, wrote on April 2: «I’m going to start dedicating personal time to this.: Looks like we all need to figure it out sooner than we thought.
Armstrong’s message came in response to a March 31 statement from Philip Martin, Coinbase’s chief security officer, who public in X a pinned call to action to the papers recent ones from Google and also those from Caltech scientists.
“It is clear that Bitcoin needs to move quickly on this, which is why Coinbase is taking the role of calling in the troops and bring together the right people, Bitcoin Core developers and the community at large, to begin to address the problem,” Martin wrote.
In his text, Martin noted that both studies are “an important signal for the industry” and that “the time to act is now.”
The manager also highlighted that Coinbase is auditing its internal infrastructure, investigating post-quantum cryptography and forming a Quantum Advisory Council. He also called on those working on post-quantum solutions for Bitcoin to contact him directly.
Criticism of Coinbase’s call
Samson Mow, Bitcoin investor, entrepreneur and educator, remembered the Coinbase CEO’s history in Bitcoin technical debates in reference to one of the most divisive governance conflicts in the protocol’s history:
The last time Brian spent personal time solving something in Bitcoin, we had the Block Size Wars.
Samson Mow, CEO and founder of JAN3.
John Stepanov, founder of the mining company FutureBit, he questioned the relevance of Armstrong’s comment: «The work has already begun. What do you personally need to do? “Do you have training in quantum physics to make informed decisions about the risks mentioned in the paper?” he wrote, addressing Armstrong.
The developer known as Wicked suspicion of Armstrong’s intentions: “Not listing illiquid ‘quantum safe’ shitcoins on Coinbase, right?” he wrote, pointing to the possibility that Coinbase takes advantage of the debate to list new assets.
Ryan Sean Adams, cryptocurrency investor and analyst, was critical with the bitcoiner community: “(…) so far there are few good answers for Bitcoin.”
A conflict of interest noted
Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, a project dedicated to developing quantum solutions for Bitcoin, responded to Armstrong’s announcement with a different reading: “A perfect opportunity for Coinbase to position itself and continue acting as the vanguard of the crypto industry,” he wrote.
That last response took on another weight when the analyst known in X as Pledditor pointed out that Coinbase Ventures co-invested in Project Eleventhe same company whose CEO celebrated Armstrong’s announcement. Project Eleven sells post-quantum migration services: if the urgency of the topic grows, your business grows with it.
Nic Carter, for his part, nuanced responses against Armstrong: “According to some bitcoiners I know, this is a vast conspiracy orchestrated by the Ethereum Foundation, Google, or possibly me. Don’t be fooled, Brian,” he wrote in X.
The response from the Bitcoin ecosystem
As reported by CriptoNoticias, the debate led to a direct rebuttal from Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream, to claims that Bitcoin developers are not working on the quantum threat.
“It is simply false and insulting to say that Bitcoin protocol researchers are doing nothing,” Back wrote in
Back noted that Blockstream has a team of 20 people dedicated to applied cryptography and securityworking on the subject basically full time.
As a concrete example, on March 30 Blockstream Research announced SHRIMPS, a digital signature scheme resistant to quantum computers three times more compact than the post-quantum standard approved by NIST in 2024. The development is in addition to SHRINCS, another proprietary scheme tested on the Liquid Network. None yet have a formal proposal to be incorporated into the base layer of Bitcoin.
If the urgency is real, the Bitcoin community has no agreed-upon roadmap or date to adopt it. If the call is interested, that fact does not change either. What the debate made clear is that the ecosystem does not have a unified position on who should lead Bitcoin’s quantum response, nor on when it is necessary to have it. However, the vision of personalities like Back make it clear that developers are working on the quantum protection of Bitcoin.