Nine institutions form group to fund Bitcoin's long-term security work
Regulation & Gov ·
BlackRock, Fidelity, Coinbase, Strategy and five other firms have created the Bitcoin Security Consortium, committing $15 million combined over three years toward research including post-quantum cryptography defenses.
A coalition spanning custodians, exchanges, asset managers and infrastructure firms unveiled the initiative on July 23, 2026, according to a press release announcing the launch. Founding members named alongside BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, Coinbase and Strategy include Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream and Galaxy, forming a group meant to represent much of the institutional Bitcoin ecosystem. The $15 million pledge is aggregate, not centrally pooled, meaning each participant decides independently which developers or research organizations to fund.
Day-to-day coordination of the group falls to Mike Schmidt, who leads Brink, a nonprofit that funds Bitcoin open-source contributors, serving the consortium in a volunteer role. The stated purpose is twofold: channel additional money toward developers and researchers already working on Bitcoin's security, and act as a public-facing reference point on the status of that work for investors and media. Strategy's chief executive, Phong Le, was quoted saying long-term holders have a direct stake in Bitcoin's continued security, framing the funding as a natural extension of that interest. BlackRock's Robert Mitchnick, its global head of digital assets, said the firm wanted to expand support for Bitcoin Core developers' work on long-term security needs.
The initiative explicitly avoids influencing Bitcoin's protocol itself. Organizers describe the consortium as modeled on how industry groups have historically backed open-source software they rely on, supplying resources without steering the underlying development, and they say the group will not weigh in on specific protocol proposals or claim to speak for Bitcoin's developer community, which remains decentralized and global.
Quantum computing capable of breaking Bitcoin's cryptography does not currently exist, and estimates cited in the announcement place that capability years into the future. Even so, organizers describe post-quantum preparation as a priority worth addressing well in advance, noting that technical contributors are already exploring the issue. The consortium plans to publish and periodically update material on Bitcoin security as work progresses.
Coverage of the launch appeared across multiple outlets, including a report from wublockchain.xyz, reflecting the announcement's reach beyond the founding members' own channels. Not yet detailed is how the $15 million will be allocated among specific developers or research programs, or what benchmarks the consortium will use to judge progress on quantum-readiness in the coming months.