Galaxy commits $5M to Bitcoin quantum migration work

Bitcoin investors may need years, not months, to prepare for a future quantum threat. Galaxy Digital said it will commit up to $5 million to support Bitcoin developers working on that transition, with funding tied to milestones as well as research and a Quantum Advisory Council.

The risk is not that quantum computers can break Bitcoin today. The issue is timing. If quantum hardware becomes strong enough, Shor's algorithm could recover a private key from an exposed elliptic-curve public key and create a valid signature. Some Bitcoin outputs already leave public keys visible onchain for long periods. Others expose them briefly when a transaction sits in the mempool.

Galaxy said the money will support review of quantum-resistant transaction proposals, post-quantum signature integration, security audits, and migration tools for software and institutions. One draft, BIP 360, proposes a soft fork that adds a Pay-to-Merkle-Root output, or P2MR, to reduce long-term public key exposure. It remains a draft and addresses only one attack window.

Another draft, BIP 361, sketches a two-phase transition that could take about five years after activation. Galaxy can help move research into code and tooling, but Bitcoin's rollout would still depend on coordination across developers, miners, node operators, wallets, exchanges, custodians, and users.