Should Bitcoin Actually Migrate to Post-Quantum Cryptography Now

[Emma29]

The Coinbase advisory board report and the cryptographers disagreement thread both land on the same basic tension: quantum computers capable of breaking Bitcoin's secp256k1 elliptic curve are not here yet, but preparing the migration is a governance problem that needs to start before the timeline is clear.

The technical obstacles are significant. Post-quantum signatures are far larger than current Bitcoin signatures. Roughly 6.7 million Bitcoin sit in addresses that have exposed public keys. Dan Boneh has warned that a rushed migration is more likely to cause catastrophic bugs than an actual quantum attack in the near term.

Do you think Bitcoin's governance can handle this migration, and what is your realistic timeline for when it becomes urgent?

[MickFoley00]

Bitcoin governance is the actual constraint here, not the technology. Getting supermajority consensus on a protocol change of this magnitude through the Bitcoin community is harder than solving the cryptography

[NeverQuitZach33]

BIP 361 being merged is the first concrete sign that serious technical work is happening inside the Bitcoin development community. It is not a solution but it is the beginning of one

[ElectricPilgrim]

The harvest now decrypt later threat is the most urgent part. If state actors are archiving Bitcoin transactions today, the vulnerability exists as soon as the quantum capability does

[Bob81]

Boneh's point about buggy migration being worse than quantum attack is exactly right and exactly why this cannot be rushed. The governance problem and the technical problem have to be solved together

[Highland Builder]

The 34 percent of Bitcoin with revealed public keys on chain is a number that does not get enough attention. That is a very large amount of value theoretically exposed on a timeline nobody can predict

[Hollow Ronan]

Satoshi's coins make this politically impossible to resolve cleanly. Any migration scheme either leaves them vulnerable, freezes them, or burns them, and each of those options has a constituency that will fight it

[Gaz90]

My timeline for urgency is when Google or another lab credibly demonstrates 1000 plus logical qubit operation at the error rates Boneh describes. That is when the discussion becomes existential rather than prudent