Strategy Launches $15M Bitcoin Security Consortium With BlackRock And Coinbase

Strategy launched the Bitcoin Security Consortium, bringing together nine financial and crypto companies that have pledged $15 million over three years to support independent work on Bitcoin’s security.

BlackRock, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets and Strategy joined as founding members alongside Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream and Galaxy. The commitments will support open-source developers, researchers and organizations working on Bitcoin’s code, testing infrastructure, cryptography and long-term resilience.

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor framed Bitcoin security as a shared responsibility for companies holding the asset or building financial products around it. Strategy is the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, while BlackRock and Fidelity operate two of the largest U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

Brink co-founder and Executive Director Mike Schmidt will coordinate the consortium’s work in a volunteer role. Brink funds Bitcoin protocol engineers through grants and fellowships while supporting code review, testing, security audits and research.

Members Keep Control Of Their Commitments

The consortium will not collect the $15 million inside a central fund. Each member will independently select the developers, researchers or organizations receiving its portion of the commitment.

The structure keeps funding decisions with the participating companies without giving the consortium authority over Bitcoin’s development process. Members will not direct the protocol, control Bitcoin Core contributors or collectively endorse individual Bitcoin Improvement Proposals.

Code changes will continue through Bitcoin’s existing open-source review process, with developers proposing and testing updates before miners, node operators, wallet providers and other network participants decide whether to adopt them.

The consortium plans to publish regular updates covering funded work, security research and areas requiring additional support. It has not disclosed how the total commitment is divided among the nine founding members.

Post-Quantum Cryptography Becomes An Early Priority

Post-quantum cryptography will be among the consortium’s initial research areas as developers examine migration paths from signature systems that could eventually become vulnerable to sufficiently powerful quantum computers.

The launch follows Strategy’s earlier plan to establish a Bitcoin security program focused on quantum uncertainty and coordination with cryptographers, security researchers and Bitcoin developers.

Current proposals include BIP 360 and its Pay-to-Merkle-Root output design, which removes Taproot’s key-path spending option while retaining script-tree functionality. Its inclusion in the Bitcoin BIPs repository does not activate the proposal or add it to Bitcoin’s consensus rules.

Onchain research has identified 6.04 million BTC with public keys already exposed, defining the pool of coins that could face future signature risk if cryptographically relevant quantum hardware is developed.