BitGo Adds Quantum Risk Management To Its Bitcoin Custody Platform — 6.9 Million BTC May Need It

BitGo disclosed Thursday a set of new quantum-risk management tools for institutional Bitcoin (BTC) wallets, as the digital asset custodian moves to address a security threat that the broader crypto industry is treating as a matter of when, not if. 

The tools apply to UTXO-based wallets and come as estimates suggest roughly 6.9 million BTC sit in addresses with exposed public keys that could become vulnerable to future quantum attacks.

The Four Tools BitGo Built To Address Quantum Risks

The concern surrounding BitGo’s plan is that every time a Bitcoin address sends a transaction, its public key becomes permanently visible on the blockchain. That poses no risk today — but if quantum computers ever advance to the point where they can reverse-engineer a private key from a public key, every address that has ever transacted becomes a potential target.

BitGo’s release includes four specific capabilities to address that. The first is a Quantum Risk Score — an in-platform system that rates each supported Bitcoin wallet’s exposure to potential quantum-related risk.

The second is a new UTXO selection method that groups and prioritizes unspent transaction outputs by address, reducing the unnecessary key exposure that can occur when funds are partially spent from an address. 

The third is a guided workflow called “Fix Exposed Addresses,” which walks institutions through the process of moving funds away from higher-risk addresses into newly generated ones with “cleaner key hygiene.” 

The fourth is updated default address-type controls that steer wallet behavior away from transaction patterns that create additional quantum-related considerations.

A Post-Quantum Test With Google 

The announcement comes roughly six weeks after BitGo completed a post-quantum transaction simulation with Silence Laboratories, using ML-DSA — a digital signature algorithm standardized by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology — to demonstrate how quantum-safe signing could work inside an existing institutional custody workflow. 

That test involved participants from Google, Stanford, and the Linux Foundation, and was described as the first post-quantum transaction simulation conducted by a regulated custodian using multi-party computation infrastructure. 

Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream, stated, “Nobody has a quantum computer that can touch Bitcoin today, but that’s exactly why the work should start now, while it’s calm and optional rather than urgent and forced.” 

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe echoed that position. “We believe institutions do not need to wait for a quantum event to begin managing quantum risk,” he said. “The right approach is to reduce exposure now, harden wallet operations, and prepare for the migration from today’s security models to future post-quantum standards.”

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