Ethereum researcher urges bunker mode planning as AI, not quantum, sparks fresh crypto key fears

[Gaz]

Yahoo Finance has a piece from 24/7 Wall St. about a new warning for crypto holders, and the twist is that it is about AI rather than quantum computers. Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, urged the community to calmly begin planning for what he called bunker mode. That would mean a coordinated move of coins to new addresses that keep public keys hidden. He linked his warning to OpenAI's release of 722 mathematical papers produced by an internal AI model

Drake's worry is that AI systems with strong maths abilities could find ways to recover private keys from public keys using ordinary computers. He said the danger may arrive in months, not years, and declared that mathematical superintelligence is upon us. He also told holders not to panic. That is a dramatic claim, and it has not been demonstrated by anyone

Michael Gutkin, vice president of research at Fireblocks, described the scenario as a classical break rather than a quantum one. He stressed that no such attack has been shown and the likelihood is still debated. The algorithm in question is ECDSA, which Bitcoin uses to verify who owns coins. If it fell, any address with a visible public key would be at risk

The numbers are big. Project Eleven's tracker counts over 14 million funded Bitcoin addresses with visible public keys. Gutkin estimates 6.7 to 7 million BTC sit in exposed addresses, about a third of the supply and worth roughly $550 to $580 billion. Drake pointed to around 20,000 early addresses linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, holding about 1 million BTC between them, which could never be moved without their owner

The article mentions the fixes being discussed. Fireblocks researchers cut the gas cost of verifying a quantum resistant signature on Ethereum from 8.09 million to 1.23 million, although that code still needs auditing. Bitcoin would need protocol changes, and BIP 360, which we covered in our Bitcoin and quantum list, proposes a new address type that hides public keys. A rush to migrate could also clog block space and push fees up

Is Drake right to sound the alarm, or is this hype? And should Bitcoin speed up work on hiding public keys either way?

Can Quantum Computers Break Bitcoin? An Ethereum Researcher Just Told Big Holders to Prepare for Bunker Modefinance.yahoo.com