The Coinbase Advisory Council warns of quantum risks to Bitcoin, the community still lacks consensus, and preparations for quantum resistance migration should be initiated immediately

The advisory committee of cryptographic experts led by Coinbase has released a report stating that Bitcoin should immediately begin preparing for potential quantum computing attacks. However, the committee did not take a clear stance on whether to freeze the millions of Bitcoins that could potentially be stolen by quantum computing in the future.

It is reported that the committee members include several leading experts, such as Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, who believe that the current focus of the debate is not on how to introduce quantum-resistant signature technology, but rather on how to handle the Bitcoins that have not been migrated for a long time. One viewpoint calls for setting a deadline, after which the existing ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes for Bitcoin will cease to be supported, and un-migrated assets will be frozen to prevent future quantum attackers from acquiring large amounts of BTC and impacting the market. Another viewpoint argues that this amounts to asset confiscation, contradicting Bitcoin's core principles of "immutability and user complete control of assets," and could set a precedent for freezing assets in the future due to regulatory pressure.

The Coinbase advisory committee pointed out that the aforementioned proposals are not mutually exclusive and can be combined, but it refused to take a position on the issue of "whether to freeze legacy BTC," believing that the final decision should be governed by the Bitcoin community. At the same time, it emphasized two points: first, the technical development of quantum-resistant signature migration should be initiated immediately and should not wait for the governance debate to conclude; second, it is necessary to clearly communicate risk information to users to avoid long-term uncertainty affecting the Bitcoin ecosystem.