'It Can Take Years': Coinbase Presses for Bitcoin Quantum Migration to Start Now

In brief

• Coinbase, which says it custodies roughly 5% of all Bitcoin, urged developers to start preparing for the quantum threat now, warning that consensus changes and migration “can take years.”
• It laid out technical requirements—backing a flexible “container” design like BIP-360, a staged “1-of-2” classical-plus-quantum spending path, and compatibility with the MPC key-splitting custodians rely on.
• The exchange said dormant, lost, and Satoshi-era coins are a separate governance problem.

Coinbase is pressing Bitcoin’s developers to begin preparing for the quantum-computing threat before it’s too late, laying out a detailed technical wish list for how the network should harden itself and arguing the work can’t wait for certainty that a threat has arrived.

In a blog post published Tuesday, the exchange, which says it custodies roughly 5% of all Bitcoin in existence, framed the shift to quantum-resistant cryptography as a complex, multi-year undertaking that needs to start now.

“Bitcoin consensus changes and ecosystem migrations can take years,” the company wrote, warning that waiting for the announcement of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, the kind capable of breaking Bitcoin’s signatures, would leave too little time to respond.