Strategy has launched the Bitcoin Security Consortium, bringing together nine financial and crypto companies that have committed $15 million over three years to support independent work on Bitcoin security.

The founding members are Strategy, BlackRock, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream and Galaxy. The commitments are intended to support open-source developers, researchers and organizations focused on Bitcoin’s codebase, testing infrastructure, cryptography and long-term resilience.

Strategy announced the initiative on X. Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said Bitcoin security is a shared responsibility for companies that hold the asset or build financial products around it. Strategy is the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, while BlackRock and Fidelity operate two of the largest U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

The consortium links some of Bitcoin’s largest corporate and institutional stakeholders to the open-source maintenance work that underpins the network. Bitcoin does not have a central company or foundation that controls protocol development, so grants and fellowships are one way companies can support review, testing and research without taking formal control of the codebase.

Brink co-founder and Executive Director Mike Schmidt will coordinate the consortium’s work in a volunteer capacity. Brink funds Bitcoin protocol engineers through grants and fellowships and also supports code review, testing, security audits and research.

Members Keep Control of Their Commitments

The consortium will not pool the $15 million in a central fund. Instead, each member will independently choose the developers, researchers or organizations that receive its share of the commitment.

That structure leaves funding decisions with the participating companies and does not give the consortium authority over Bitcoin’s development process. Members will not direct the protocol, control Bitcoin Core contributors or collectively endorse specific Bitcoin Improvement Proposals.

Bitcoin code changes will continue to move through the network’s existing open-source review process. Developers propose and test updates, after which miners, node operators, wallet providers and other network participants determine whether to adopt them.

The consortium plans to publish regular updates on funded work, security research and areas where additional support is needed. It has not disclosed how the overall $15 million commitment is divided among the nine founding members.

Post-Quantum Cryptography Is an Early Focus

Post-quantum cryptography will be one of the consortium’s initial research priorities, as developers study migration paths away from signature systems that could eventually become vulnerable to sufficiently powerful quantum computers.

The launch follows Strategy’s earlier plan to establish a Bitcoin security program addressing quantum uncertainty and coordination with cryptographers, security researchers and Bitcoin developers. The topic is not limited to Bitcoin: governments, standards bodies and security researchers have been evaluating post-quantum cryptography because widely used public-key systems could require migration if cryptographically relevant quantum computers become practical.

Current proposals include BIP 360 and its Pay-to-Merkle-Root output design, which removes Taproot’s key-path spending option while preserving script-tree functionality. Inclusion in the Bitcoin BIPs repository does not activate the proposal or add it to Bitcoin’s consensus rules.

On-chain research has identified 6.04 million BTC with public keys already exposed, defining the set of coins that could face future signature risk if cryptographically relevant quantum hardware is developed.

The consortium has not named its first grant recipients and has not set a date for its first public security update.