{"id":14210,"date":"2026-10-08T06:46:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=14210"},"modified":"2026-10-08T06:46:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:46:01","slug":"ethereum-researcher-warns-ai-could-beat-quantum-computers-to-cryptos-cryptography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=14210","title":{"rendered":"Ethereum Researcher Warns AI Could Beat Quantum Computers to Crypto\u2019s Cryptography"},"content":{"rendered":"

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  • Justin Drake posted on 7 October that holders, starting with large ones, should move the bulk of their funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • He said it is now reasonable to brace for ECDSA, the signature scheme behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, breaking before Q-Day, in the worst case within months.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin replied that nobody should scramble to move funds immediately, while backing hash-based cryptography over lattices.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake urged the industry on 7 October to plan for what he termed bunker mode, warning AI-driven maths could break Bitcoin and Ethereum\u2019s signature scheme before quantum computers do.<\/p>\n

    Posting on X, he recommended a controlled mass migration of funds to fresh addresses. Holders, starting with large and sophisticated ones, should move the bulk of their funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction, he said. Such an address keeps its public key hidden behind a hash.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    That step needs no new cryptography or wallets, Drake said, and a rushed migration would do more harm than good.<\/p>\n

    Read more: Trump Launches \u2018Super Intelligence Force\u2019 to Drive US AI Leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Months, Not Years<\/h2>\n

    Drake wrote that it is now reasonable to brace for the possibility that ECDSA, as that signature scheme is known, breaks in the worst case within months. By a break, he means fast private key recovery, in about a week, on hardware such as a large GPU cluster.<\/p>\n

    He cited OpenAI\u2019s release of new mathematical results the day before. That OpenAI repository, created on 6 October, holds 722 manuscripts in 372 families produced by an unreleased internal model. OpenAI says many of the results have been formalised in Lean and that some unformalised ones could have issues.<\/p>\n

    \u201cMy inclination is to go all-in on hash-based cryptography and avoid structured mathematical assumptions entirely, whether from curves, lattices, or isogenies,\u201d Drake wrote. He named Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex and Tether as having an opportunity to harden their cold storage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    He added that wallets holding under 50 BTC enjoy partial cover from what he calls Satoshi\u2019s shield, the roughly 20,000 exposed addresses of Bitcoin\u2019s creator that each hold 50 BTC.<\/p>\n

    Buterin Urges No Scramble<\/h2>\n

    Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin replied later that day that he does not recommend anyone scramble to move funds to new wallets immediately. He said the risk from AI-accelerated maths deserves serious attention. The new danger, in his view, lies in lattice-based schemes such as ML-DSA, which could take serious hits from two more years of AI maths.<\/p>\n

    For that reason, Buterin said, Ethereum\u2019s lean roadmap has gone hash-only for the past year. He agreed that funds belong in never-used addresses for anyone who finds the move easy.<\/p>\n

    After Google published a more efficient version of Shor\u2019s algorithm in March, Drake put at least a 10% chance on a quantum computer recovering an ECDSA key by 2032. Ethereum\u2019s strawmap already targets a post-quantum base layer built on hash-based schemes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    The Foundation\u2019s post-quantum team says those layer-one upgrades could be completed by 2029, and Drake said the timelines must now be revisited and accelerated.<\/p>\n

    Read more: Evernorth SPAC Nearly Quadruples Ahead of XRP Treasury Merger<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

    AI,Ethereum,Quantum Computing#Ethereum #Researcher #Warns #Beat #Quantum #Computers #Cryptos #Cryptography1791441961<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Justin Drake posted on 7 October that holders, starting with large ones, should move the bulk of their funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction. He said it is now reasonable to brace for ECDSA, the signature scheme behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, breaking before Q-Day, in the worst case within months. Ethereum co-founder<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1123,7308,4924,1069,31,1673,6076,220],"class_list":["post-14210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bitcoin","tag-beat","tag-computers","tag-cryptography","tag-cryptos","tag-ethereum","tag-quantum","tag-researcher","tag-warns"],"yoast_head":"\nEthereum Researcher Warns AI Could Beat Quantum Computers to Crypto\u2019s Cryptography - Crypto News: Latest Cryptocurrency News and Analysis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=14210\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ethereum Researcher Warns AI Could Beat Quantum Computers to Crypto\u2019s Cryptography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Justin Drake posted on 7 October that holders, starting with large ones, should move the bulk of their funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction. 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