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BTC 
ETH Ethereum researcher Justin Drake calls on the industry to enter "bunker mode": AI may crack signatures earlier than quantum computing
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake urged the cryptocurrency industry to start planning what he calls a "bunker mode." He warned that artificial intelligence could breach the elliptic curve signatures that protect Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets "within months rather than years." On October 7, Drake issued a document on Platform X calling for a "controlled mass transfer" of funds, that is, to transfer funds to a new address with a public key that has never appeared on the chain. The warning quickly sparked divisions in the industry: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believed the risks were real, but warned holders not to rush into action.
Why does Drake think AI will be one step ahead?
Drake's worst-case scenario is not the quantum attack the industry has been preparing to deal with for years. He wrote in the article that there is now "reason to prepare for the collapse of ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) before quantum computers are practical." He defines a "crash" as a quick recovery of private keys on existing hardware, such as a large GPU cluster, such as "completed within a week." This is a classic computing scenario that will occur years before Ethereum plans to turn to anti-quantum cryptography goal in December 2029.
The trigger was the 722 mathematics papers published by OpenAI on October 6. The papers were generated by a top-level model that has not yet been made public on approximately 4,000 mathematical problems. Drake said the release showed that "mathematical superintelligence has arrived at us." He believes that elliptic curves with "rich structure" are more vulnerable to attack than designs designed to leave no available patterns. This view reshapes the nature of the quantum threat that regulators had previously focused on: AI can find shortcuts without a quantum computer.
Drake and Butrin: Consensus is about risk, disagreement is about urgency
Drake's proposal is deliberately incremental. Large and complex holders should move "most of the funds" to a new address where a transaction has never been signed and rotate the rest when subsequent transactions are signed. He emphasized that "there is no need for new cryptography or new wallets" and added that wallets holding less than 50 BTC benefited in part from "Satoshi Nakamoto's shield"-that is, 50 BTC held in each of the approximately 20,000 exposed addresses.
Butrin agreed that the industry should take AI that accelerates mathematical development seriously, but expressed reservations about the sense of urgency. "I wouldn't recommend anyone rushing to move funds to a new wallet today," he wrote, adding that he "lost more money due to failed migration than all hacking attacks combined." Butrin, on the other hand, went further than Drake, warning that lattice cryptography, which is the basis of quantum-resistant standards such as ML-DSA, could suffer a "severe blow" in AI mathematical advances over the next two years, and pointed out that Ethereum's roadmap has shifted to a "hash-only" signature scheme.
What it means for holders and Ethereum roadmap
It has not yet been proven that Bitcoin or Ethereum wallet keys have actually been cracked, and Drake himself also noted that "cryptographic breakthroughs are extremely low" in papers published by OpenAI. As Bitcoin fell below the $83,000 mark on October 8, tokens associated with anti-quantum cryptography reversed. According to CoinDesk market data, Algorand is up about 9% since midnight and Starknet is up about 4%.
Specific next steps are relatively modest: complex entities reduce public key exposure at low cost, and exchanges strengthen cold storage security. Drake said he would present this view to agencies in London next month and push for a review and acceleration of the hash-based cryptography timeline in the Ethereum roadmap. For most holders, the common conclusion reached by the two researchers is prudent: there is no need to panic, but unnecessary public key exposure should be reduced from now on.
