Bankless · Monday, July 13, 2026
Dan Held identifies post-quantum cryptography (BIP 360) as Bitcoin's most pressing, though not immediate, concern. He stresses the need for progress on upgrading Bitcoin's signatures to be quantum-resistant, estimating that consensus and migration could take several years, even if the quantum threat is still some years away.
“So, you know, Bitcoin, the BIP is basically a Bitcoin improvement to the protocol that's proposed You know, there's a couple floating around, I think, BIP 360s around quantum, like improving Bitcoin to be quantum, post-quantum cryptography, basically solving some of the, you know, with quantum, the current issue with Bitcoin is that, you know, when you sign a transaction with your private key, that the private key can get exposed.”
“And so we have to upgrade Bitcoin signatures to post-quantum secure signatures. Yeah, and we have to pick which signature is the best one, and there's a bunch of trade-offs with each one.”
“I would say this is the biggest unresolved question. And I would say most pressing issue in Bitcoin. Pressing doesn't mean it's an immediate concern, but pressing as in we need to have, I'd say, some forward momentum. Yeah, we need the foot needs to be on the gas. Exactly. Exactly.”
“I think it's still five years away, probably at a minimum. But even then, it still might take us quite a while to agree upon how we upgrade and the process of migration. You know, if every single Bitcoin address wanted to move over to a post-quantum secure encryption standard, it would take a significant amount of time.”