AmericanFortress researchers have unveiled a patent-pending post-quantum signature scheme that could protect the global crypto ecosystem from future quantum attacks without requiring large-scale fund migration.
According to the company, the breakthrough means that Satoshi Nakamoto’s massive 1.1 million Bitcoins can be saved, as well as nearly 5 million Bitcoins in dormant accounts, with a total value of approximately $400 billion.
In an interview with CoinDesk, AmericanFortress CEO Michal Pospieszalski explained that inactive and dormant wallets are not necessarily vulnerable to unscrupulous hackers who could make off with the loot and dump it on the market, causing untold consequences.
However, Pospizarski said a major point of confusion is old Bitcoin. Because the wallet in the Satoshi era is a “Pre-BIP32” address and has no mnemonic derivation, it cannot be automatically upgraded like a newly created wallet. Instead, AmericanFortress’s protocol will implement a defensive freeze via a backwards-compatible soft fork.
“Our quantum-resistant protocol will automatically freeze and protect these funds until governance determines what Q will do with them in the future,” Pospieszalski said, noting that the community would eventually have to vote to move, destroy, or redistribute frozen assets.
“But this means that even Satoshi wallets can be secured with smaller BIPs, which we are looking into,” Pospieszalski said. “It means the integrity of Bitcoin going forward — and this is just BTC. It also works for all other major chains, such as Ethereum, Solana and Tron.”
Previously, SAVA Digital Asset Fund, Moon Pursuit Capital and 0G Labs jointly led US$8 million in seed funding. Along with the funding round, the company also released a cryptographic paper that identifies specific network performance bottlenecks that have plagued other post-quantum experiments.
This week, standard quantum security tests on the BNB chain worked, but transaction throughput was significantly reduced by 40%.
Unlike traditional approaches that require an entirely new blockchain or exhaustive address rotation, AmericanFortress’ approach uses zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to prove master seed ownership at the time of spend. The strategy deploys three different solutions: Pre-BIP32 raw key protection, standard BIP32 quantum protection and a high-speed “QBIP32” derivative scheme. Since it integrates natively with existing curves, it causes no performance degradation.
“This is just a sequential node and wallet software update,” Pospieszalski noted.
The American Fortress CEO said threats to cryptocurrencies are highly concentrated, adding that while quantum computers cannot crack the master seed phrase, they can reverse engineer individual private keys from wallet addresses whose public keys have been exposed on-chain.
Pospieszalski said research shows more than $600 billion in crypto assets are in this vulnerable state, including 100% of Solana addresses, describing this as “common sense.”
For active users, migrating to the quantum proof level takes just 50 milliseconds with a simple wallet prompt, he explained, adding that for dormant seed-derived wallets, protection can be performed programmatically at the base layer.
Pospieszalski said the cost of such quantum proofs is extremely low, equivalent to the price of a single aggregated transaction, rather than paying for each historical transaction individually.
Pospieszalski revealed that American Fortress is actively licensing the SDK to Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains in exchange for marketing positioning, although he said the company is open to exclusive acquisitions.
American Fortress said Bitcoin’s cryptographic approach is expected to be ready for discussion in the coming weeks, ahead of a formal demonstration in Paris on June 2.
Ultimately, Pospieszalski believes this is a turning point in the longevity of digital assets. “Sudden quantum proof of Bitcoin is now possible,” he said.
