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Mike Belshe, co-founder and CEO of BitGo, stood in front of roughly 250 institutional Bitcoin decision-makers at the BFC in NYC symposium on June 26 and made a case that most of the room probably wasn’t thrilled to hear: Bitcoin’s cryptographic armor has an expiration date, and the industry needs to start fitting a replacement now.
Bitcoin’s security relies on elliptic curve cryptography, a system that would crumble under a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. Experts routinely debate whether quantum computers capable of breaking Bitcoin’s cryptography are years away or decades away.
The proposal getting the most attention is BIP-361, which was formally introduced on April 15, 2026. It lays out a phased migration plan for moving Bitcoin to quantum-resistant signature schemes. BIP-361 doesn’t demand an overnight overhaul. Instead, it charts a gradual path where quantum-resistant alternatives coexist with current cryptographic methods before eventually replacing them.
Belshe didn’t just theorize about quantum resistance at BFC. He came armed with a proof point. BitGo executed what it described as the first quantum-resistant transaction on the Ethereum testnet, a milestone achieved in the lead-up to the symposium.
Prior to the symposium, Belshe appeared in a May 2026 video discussion alongside Adam Back, the legendary cypherpunk and CEO of Blockstream, where the two covered quantum-resistant signatures in detail. Back’s involvement lends significant weight to the conversation. He’s one of the few people cited in Bitcoin’s original whitepaper.
BIP-361’s phased approach also addresses a perennial concern in Bitcoin governance. Hard forks, or backward-incompatible protocol changes, are politically radioactive in Bitcoin culture. The 2017 block size wars left scars that still influence how proposals are received. A gradual migration that doesn’t force an immediate fork is far more likely to achieve consensus.
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