Trump directing 'government dollars and time' to quantum security could be a boon for bitcoin

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Monday aimed at accelerating U.S. quantum computing capabilities, a move that some crypto-industry experts argue will be a boon to quantum-secure blockchain R&D.

"The implications are government dollars and time spent towards realizing those goals," Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden told The Block via email, referring to the dual offensive and defensive goals of Trump’s EOs to achieve post-quantum security.

The orders — EO 14409 on securing the nation against advanced cryptographic attacks and EO 14411 on ushering in the next frontier of quantum innovation — establish concrete timelines, including a push for quantum sensors by September 2028 and full post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration for federal high-value assets and high-impact systems by the end of 2031.

Trump’s orders come amid growing awareness of the quantum threats to the cryptography underpinning blockchains. Organizations like the Ethereum Foundation and Solana Foundation have begun R&D efforts to achieve post-quantum security, and many within the Bitcoin community have raised alarms about the potential risks. 

It’s estimated that millions of bitcoins with exposed public addresses are at risk, as powerful enough quantum computers can use Shor’s algorithm to derive their private keys.

Pruden noted that the orders amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to extend PQC requirements across the "entire federal contractor base," not just government agencies, helping to accelerate development efforts. 

It also "sets an explicit deadline to adopt PQC by 2031," Pruden said. "Previously, the U.S. government had only issued guidance that classical cryptography was supposed to be deprecated by 2035, but PQC adoption was implicit vs. explicit in that case."

Pruden pointed out that the orders specifically reference NIST-standardized algorithms, while "many blockchain protocols are exploring non-NIST-standardized schemes." NIST-standardized PQC algorithms are the official U.S. Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) designed to resist quantum attacks beginning in 2024, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205).

The EOs naming NIST could drive broader adoption of lattice-based systems like ML-DSA among contractors and vendors seeking compliance. "It’s unclear whether [non-NIST] would be acceptable for any federal contractor/vendor," he said. 

Crypto agility

For its part, Pruden noted that Project Eleven is emphasizing "crypto agility" — the ability to support and easily switch between arbitrary cryptographic algorithms — as a key strategy for long-term resilience. "For the most part, the industry is in the research and development phase. Most private firms are taking a reactive approach (waiting for the protocols) rather than a proactive one," he said. 

Project Eleven, which is building tools to help Bitcoin prepare for quantum threats, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Castle Island Ventures earlier this year. The firm published a report arguing so-called "Q-Day," or when quantum computers are able to break modern encryption, could come as early as 2030, putting about 6.9 million bitcoins at risk. 

While the EOs did not mention blockchains directly, Pruden said it could have a positive impact on switching to quantum-secure tools. 

"This EO doesn't touch Bitcoin directly (it governs federal systems and contractors), but it sets the regulatory tempo, and the live question for Bitcoin specifically is the tangible path to adoption of PQC signatures, with proposals like BIP-360 (the quantum-resistant address work) being the things to watch," he said. 

This is all the more significant given Trump’s earlier executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.