Can Bitcoin's signatures actually be replaced, and what does the replacement cost? In the [Nth] episode of The Quantum Bitcoin Podcast, Bitcoin historian Pete Rizzo and co-host Nathan Jeffay put that question to Jonas Nick, Blockstream's Director of Research, who has spent the past year and a half building the smallest post-quantum signature scheme anyone has proposed for Bitcoin and who maintained Bitcoin's secp256k1 library for over seven years before that.


Links referenced:https://blockstream.com/quantum/https://blog.blockstream.com/op_checkshrincs-a-hash-based-signature-opcode-for-post-quantum-bitcoin/https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/2203https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/shrincs-post-quantum-signatures-for-bitcoin/https://blog.blockstream.com/searching-for-shrincs-parameters/https://blog.blockstream.com/blockstream-quarterly-update-q1-2026/https://blog.blockstream.com/blockstream-quarterly-update-q2-2026/https://bitcoinops.org/https://delvingbitcoin.org/https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawikihttps://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0340.mediawikihttps://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0341.mediawikiCryptography and historyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPHINCS%2Bhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Digital_Signature_Algorithmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnorr_signaturehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_signature_schemehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_signaturehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice-based_cryptographyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2Presented in partnership with Starkware.CHAPTERS00:00 Meet the expert: Jonas Nick00:32 A year and a half inside the problem01:59 It isn't only the signatures. Lightning too.03:40 The assumption everything rests on04:47 What cryptographers stopped researching05:27 Why a plan is needed regardless of timing06:16 If Bitcoin does nothing: every coin, gone07:13 Why this needs a consensus change08:39 The people who say it will never happen10:01 Bitcoin as a social construct11:24 The government's post-quantum billions13:12 Why NIST's use case doesn't transfer14:42 Why hash-based is the conservative bet15:00 100x larger signatures15:37 Seven transactions per second becomes half of one16:52 There is no free lunch17:03 What breaks: BIP-32, silent payments, MuSig, FROST18:01 Verification time and who stops running nodes18:56 Signing time and the hardware wallet problem20:50 No reinsurance22:42 No silver bullet23:06 SHRINCS and the statefulness trade-off23:19 Five to ten times larger, seven down to three25:06 Who actually pays for this26:04 Why he won't bundle a block size increase27:05 Four megabytes was never the right number29:35 What SHRINCS actually is35:38 Why Bitcoin's usage pattern makes this work37:36 Already running on Liquid38:38 What Liquid doesn't protect39:47 The next step is a BIP41:23 Nobody knows what rough consensus means43:21 What changed in the last six months44:17 Where to follow the discussionGUESTSJonas Nick is Director of Research at Blockstream, where he leads the post-quantum signature work. With cryptographer Mikhail Kudinov he designed SHRINCS, a hash-based signature scheme producing 324-byte signatures whose security rests entirely on SHA-256, and SHRIMPS, its multi-device counterpart. In May 2026 he published OP_CHECKSHRINCS, a proposed Bitcoin opcode that would verify those signatures through an extension of the Taproot tree. FOLLOWThe Quantum Bitcoin Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@QuantumBitcoinPodcastPete Rizzo: https://x.com/pete_rizzo_Starkware: https://starkware.co/Jonas Nick: https://x.com/n1cklerNew episodes release weekly. Subscribe to follow the full series.

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