Justin Drake urges bunker mode over AI risk to crypto encryption
CIE News ·
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake warned that AI could break ECDSA encryption sooner than quantum computing, advising users to migrate funds to unused addresses.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake advised the crypto sector on October 7 to prepare for "bunker mode" by moving assets to unused addresses, Decrypt reported. Drake warned that rapid advances in artificial intelligence could allow attackers to recover private keys from exposed public keys on large GPU clusters. According to Drake, this threat to the ECDSA signature scheme used by Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum could emerge faster than quantum computing, potentially within months in a worst-case scenario.
The proposed mitigation requires shifting funds to fresh addresses that have never signed a transaction, which ensures their public keys stay hidden behind cryptographic hashes. Drake urged major industry participants, including Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex, and Tether, to reinforce their cold storage systems. He also noted that smaller wallets holding under 50 BTC have partial protection, as approximately 20,000 exposed addresses tied to Satoshi Nakamoto would likely serve as early targets.
Following the warning, Drake stated he will advocate for accelerating Ethereum's roadmap toward hash-based cryptography. The Ethereum Foundation previously established a dedicated post-quantum team earlier in 2026 to transition network security toward quantum-resistant alternatives.