Consortium of Crypto Giants Pools $15 Million for Bitcoin Security Research

A consortium of nine major crypto market participants has formed to support Bitcoin security research and open-source development. The group, called the Bitcoin Security Consortium, will pool a combined $15 million over three years to fund developers, researchers, and organizations working on Bitcoin's long-term security.

The consortium includes companies like BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Galaxy. Each member will choose which projects to fund from the $15 million pool.

According to Robert Mitchnick, digital assets head at BlackRock, the group's goal is to provide additional funding for Bitcoin Core developers, who do 'incredibly important work.' The consortium emphasizes that it will not direct Bitcoin development or take positions on proposed protocol changes.

The group's focus partly includes preparing Bitcoin for advances in quantum computing. This effort comes as some experts warn of the potential risks posed by powerful quantum computers capable of breaking Bitcoin's cryptography, which does not currently exist.