Points of Focus
- Nine institutions pledged an aggregate of $15 million over three years to Bitcoin security.
- The consortium funds developers preparing Bitcoin for potential quantum computing threats.
- Each member funds its own operations independently rather than pooling into a single fund.
A group of financial institutions and Bitcoin companies announced the formation of the Bitcoin Security Consortium on July 23, an initiative backed by an aggregate of $15 million in member pledges over the next three years aimed at supporting the long-term security and resilience of the Bitcoin network.
Nine founding members span the institutional stack
Founding members are Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Galaxy, and Strategy, a roster that spans custodians, asset managers, exchanges, infrastructure providers, and payment companies.
Blockstream, founded in 2014 by Adam Back, operates the Liquid Network, which the company says secures more than $8.5 billion in total value, and describes its own research efforts as supporting the next generation of quantum-resistant financial infrastructure. Strategy holds the largest corporate Bitcoin position of any public company.
The consortium’s day-to-day work is coordinated by Mike Schmidt, executive director of Brink — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that funds and supports Bitcoin open-source developers — who serves in a volunteer capacity.
Each member directs its own funding independently to the developers, researchers, and organizations it chooses rather than contributing to a single pooled fund. The consortium’s stated role, beyond funding, is to serve as a reference source on the state of Bitcoin security research for investors, the public, and the media.
Preparing for a quantum computing era
The consortium’s funding priority includes the long-term work of preparing Bitcoin for a potential era of quantum computing that could threaten its underlying cryptography.
Large-scale quantum computers with that capability do not exist today, and credible estimates place such capability years away, according to the announcement. However, the Bitcoin technical community is already working on post-quantum protections. The consortium frames this as a meaningful long-term priority rather than an urgent near-term threat, aiming to support that work while providing a grounded reference point for investors, the public, and the media as the field develops.
Strategy CEO Phong Le said in the release, “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.”
BlackRock global head of digital assets Robert Mitchnick added, “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.”
No role in protocol decisions
The consortium explicitly does not develop or direct Bitcoin’s protocol, does not take a position on specific protocol changes, and does not speak for Bitcoin or its developers, according to the announcement. Its model draws on how industry groups have historically supported open-source software they depend on by contributing resources and awareness without controlling the underlying work. Bitcoin’s development remains the work of a global, decentralized community of contributors, according to the release.
That structure distinguishes the consortium from a standards body or a foundation with authority over Bitcoin’s codebase. It functions instead as a funding and awareness vehicle layered on top of an existing, independent developer ecosystem, one that the member companies rely on but do not control.
In the coming months, the consortium intends to publish and maintain material on Bitcoin’s security, updated as developments warrant, alongside continued funding and support for the developer community.
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