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