Samson Mow has warned that rushing Bitcoin’s transition to post-quantum cryptography could introduce new vulnerabilities instead of improving security.
The comments come after Brian Armstrong and Coinbase security chief Philip Martin urged the industry to accelerate preparations for potential quantum computing threats to Bitcoin.
“Simply put: make Bitcoin safe against quantum computers just to get pwned by normal computers,”
Mow said, cautioning that premature changes could expose the network to current risks.
Mow said post-quantum signatures could be 10 to 125 times larger than existing ones, potentially reducing transaction throughput and impacting network efficiency.
He added that such changes could reignite debates similar to Bitcoin’s past block size wars, which divided the community over scaling and decentralisation trade-offs.
The discussion follows renewed attention on quantum computing progress, including research from Google and California Institute of Technology.
Mow said that while preparation for quantum threats is necessary, a transition is likely not urgent given that practical quantum computers may still be 10 to 20 years away.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $68,831.95.