Project Eleven urges Bitcoin to start post-quantum migration

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Bitcoin post-quantum migration

Highlights

Project Eleven's Pruden urges immediate implementation of post-quantum signature schemes on Bitcoin, citing manageable risk of early action versus severe consequence of delay.
BIP-360 proposes a quantum-resistant Taproot output, with Blockstream already deploying a hash-based scheme on the Liquid Network, but production rollout now seen as priority.
Migration to a quantum-resistant standard poses challenges exceeding Taproot, requiring full ecosystem coordination and urgent action to preempt possible quantum-enabled key theft.

Post-quantum rollout seen as urgent

As reported by CoinDesk, Pruden tells the Consensus Miami conference that Bitcoin’s developer community should stop waiting for certainty on quantum-computing timelines and instead focus on putting a post-quantum signature scheme into production.

He says the balance of risk favors early action. In his view, the downside of adding new cryptography before it is strictly needed is manageable, while the downside of moving too late is far more severe if a sufficiently capable quantum computer can derive private keys from exposed public keys using Shor’s algorithm.

Pruden says the solution is to introduce a new Bitcoin signature scheme that does not rely on the classical mathematics behind the elliptic-curve digital signature algorithm, or ECDSA. He notes that the National Institute of Standards and Technology has already standardized post-quantum approaches based on hash functions and lattices, and says discussion in the Bitcoin community is leaning toward the hash-based route.

He points to BIP-360, proposed last year, as groundwork for a quantum-resistant Taproot output type, while Blockstream has already deployed a hash-based signature scheme on its Liquid Network. Pruden says the priority now is to move those ideas beyond research and into production use.

Migration challenges and market implications

Pruden warns that shifting Bitcoin to a post-quantum standard is likely to be harder than the Taproot upgrade. While Taproot took five years and remained optional for users, he says a quantum-resistant migration would require participation from bitcoin holders, wallet providers, exchanges and institutions across the ecosystem.

He adds that the timing risk is acute because an attacker with a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could potentially front-run pending transactions within a single block by paying a higher fee after deriving the relevant private keys. That scenario, he says, raises the stakes for starting the migration before the hardware threat becomes real.

On the unresolved issue of dormant bitcoin held in quantum-vulnerable addresses, including coins linked by some researchers to Satoshi Nakamoto, Pruden says the community should postpone that dispute and focus first on executing the migration. He says the debate pits Bitcoin’s fixed-supply principles against digital property rights, and suggests the ultimate decision will be shaped by the broader community, institutions and the market.

Pruden also says views inside Bitcoin Core remain mixed, with some developers treating the threat seriously and others doubting quantum computers will become practical. He argues that much of the scientific community expects the technology to emerge, and in some cases believes the timelines are accelerating, even as quantum physics may also help produce future cryptographic tools.

In our earlier article, we covered how major traditional financial institutions are increasingly engaging with bitcoin as mainstream investor demand grows. At Consensus Miami 2026, Eric Trump pointed to firms such as Merrill, Charles Schwab and JPMorgan becoming more directly involved, including JPMorgan allowing clients to borrow against their bitcoin holdings after previously dismissing the asset. The piece also noted American Bitcoin’s push to scale its mining and position itself as a low-cost way to accumulate bitcoin.

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