Coinbase Advisory Board Paper Warns Crypto Cannot Afford to Wait on Quantum Threats A 50 page quantum computing crypto risk assessment published Tuesday by Coinbase’s independent advisory board concludes that while today’s blockchains remain secure, a fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of breaking widely used encryption is increasingly plausible and that preparation must begin now, warning that “waiting for it to be urgent is not a good idea.” - The 50 page paper, authored by an independent board including Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, and EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan. - Replacing today’s signatures with quantum-resistant alternatives could expand blockchain data sizes by up to 38 times, according to one estimate in the report, meaning the transition carries significant engineering costs and performance tradeoffs. - Bitcoin wallets that have already revealed their public keys are identified as the most immediately vulnerable category of holdings in any future quantum attack scenario. Quantum computing crypto risk has its most authoritative industry assessment yet. The Coinbase advisory board, a group of world-class cryptographers and blockchain researchers convened by Coinbase in January 2026, released its first major position paper Tuesday: a 50 page analysis of how future quantum computers could affect blockchain security and what the industry must do before that threat becomes real. “Waiting for it to be urgent is not a good idea,” the paper states, emphasizing that transitions across blockchains, wallets, and exchanges could take years to execute safely even after all the technical standards are in place. The board members who authored the paper include Dan Boneh, the director of the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research; Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation; Sreeram Kannan, the founder of EigenLayer; Yehuda Lindell, Coinbase’s head of cryptography; and Dahlia Malkhi, an expert in resilient distributed systems. Their institutional breadth gives the