Galaxy Puts $5M Into Bitcoin's Quantum Glow-Up Before Q-Day Comes 🛡️

Galaxy Digital on Tuesday unveiled a Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative, committing up to $5 million in developer grants, a research program and a new advisory council to harden the Bitcoin network against future quantum attacks. The Nasdaq-listed firm said grant applications will be accepted immediately. "As leaders in the digital assets space, we believe it's important that we help be part of the solution to any potential threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin," said Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy.

The initiative targets what researchers call "Q-Day," the point at which a quantum machine could break the elliptic curve cryptography securing Bitcoin. Using Shor's algorithm, an attacker could derive a private key from an exposed public key, forge a signature and drain a wallet, with nothing on-chain flagging the transaction as fraudulent. Old and reused addresses are most at risk. Defenses under discussion include migrating funds to quantum-resistant addresses and adopting new signature schemes through proposals such as BIP-360 and BIP-361, though such upgrades could take years given Bitcoin's decentralized governance.

The program includes a Quantum Advisory Council whose inaugural members are University of Calgary professor Barry Sanders, MIT Sea Grant Knauss Fellow Damien Bérubé and Boston University computer science professor Eran Tromer, with analysis to be published through Galaxy Research. The launch lands amid an accelerating warning cycle: a May report from quantum security firm Project Eleven concluded a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is more likely than not to exist by 2033 and potentially as early as 2030, estimating roughly 6.9 million Bitcoin sit in quantum-exposed addresses. In June, Coinbase's quantum advisory council urged developers to begin migration work rather than debate timing, pegging vulnerable supply at about 7 million $BTC.

That same month, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders aimed at strengthening U.S. leadership in quantum computing and moving the federal deadline for post-quantum cryptography to December 2031. On July 16, Project Eleven unveiled a technique letting users prove wallet ownership after Q-Day by verifying control of a parent key rather than a signature. "This gives them a fallback: prove ownership through derivation, not signature, even after that window closes," the firm said, framing the approach as a contingency for holders who cannot migrate funds in time.