Strategy, Coinbase, BlackRock and other leading financial institutions and Bitcoin (BTC) companies launched the Bitcoin Security Consortium on Thursday to support the long-term security and resilience of the Bitcoin network.
Bitcoin Security Consortium launches with $15M commitment from industry leaders
The consortium‘s founding members have independently pledged a combined $15 million over the next three years to fund developers and researchers working on Bitcoin’s security, including efforts to prepare the network for potential threats from quantum computing.
The founding members include Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Galaxy and Strategy. The group represents a broad cross-section of the institutional Bitcoin ecosystem, including asset managers, custodians, exchanges, infrastructure providers, payments companies and major Bitcoin holders.
The consortiums day-to-day activities will be coordinated by Mike Schmidt, Executive Director of Brink, a nonprofit organization that funds and supports Bitcoin open-source developers.
The initiative aims to support developers and researchers already working on Bitcoins security. It will also provide investors, the media and the general public with a reliable source of information about the state of those efforts.
“As long-term holders, we have every incentive to see Bitcoin remain secure for generations. Funding the people who do this work, and helping inform the conversation around it, is a natural way for us to contribute,” said Strategy CEO Phong Le in a Thursday statement.
The group will not develop or direct Bitcoin‘s protocol and will not take positions on specific protocol changes. It also emphasized that it does not speak on behalf of Bitcoin or its developers, with the network’s development remaining the responsibility of BTCs global, decentralized community of contributors.
“Bitcoin Core developers do incredibly important work, and we‘re pleased that our firm and the others in this group will now be making significant additional funding available to support Bitcoin’s long-term security needs,” said Robert Mitchnick, global head of digital assets at BlackRock.
Bitcoin Security Consortium to focus on post-quantum threats and open-source development
A key focus of the consortium will be preparing Bitcoin for potential risks posed by quantum computing. Although large-scale quantum computers capable of threatening Bitcoins existing cryptography do not currently exist, credible estimates suggest that such capabilities remain a few years away.
The group plans to publish and maintain materials on Bitcoins security in the coming months, updating the information as developments warrant. It also intends to continue funding and supporting the Bitcoin developer community.
The consortium stated that its broader goal is to strengthen awareness and understanding of Bitcoin‘s security and to support the open-source contributors who maintain the network’s resilience.
The launch comes amid ongoing debate over potential changes to Bitcoins protocol. In July, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and other prominent Bitcoin advocates opposed BIP-110, a proposal that sought to temporarily limit the use of arbitrary data in Bitcoin transactions.
Saylor argued that changing Bitcoins rules to restrict how people use the network would undermine its principles of individual freedom, property rights and open markets. Saylor described BIP-110 as an attempt to impose “monetary purity by fiat.”
Bitcoin is trading at $64,710, down 2% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing.