Bitcoin’s post-quantum migration will be harder than Taproot and needs to start now, Project Eleven CEO says Alex Pruden said the asymmetry between acting on a post-quantum signature scheme today and waiting for certainty about quantum-computing hardware timelines means Bitcoin developers should move from research into production. What to know: - Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference Wednesday that Bitcoin’s developer community should move from research into production on a post-quantum signature option rather than waiting for certainty about quantum-computer timelines. - He said the migration will be substantially harder than Taproot, which took roughly five years and remained opt-in, because every bitcoin user, wallet and exchange will need to participate in a post-quantum migration to stay secure. - Asked for his personal view, Pruden said recycling dormant quantum-vulnerable coins back into Bitcoin’s supply curve would put him “overall” on the confiscation side, though he stressed the community and market would ultimately decide. Bitcoin’s developer community should stop waiting for certainty about quantum-computing timelines and focus on getting a post-quantum signature scheme into production, Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference on Wednesday. Pruden said the asymmetry between acting now and waiting favors action. “We added some new cryptography, we kind of built in this optionality, it turns out we didn’t need quite yet, but at least we have it,” he said, describing the worst case of moving early. The worst case of moving late is far worse: a sufficiently capable quantum computer could derive private keys from any exposed public key using Shor’s algorithm, the 1994 algorithm that remains the canonical example of what a quantum machine can do that a classical one cannot. Pruden valued the asset at stake at roughly $2.3 trillion. “In a very real sense, someone with