Bitcoin Security Consortium with Mike Schmidt | SLP759

**Stephan Livera** (0:00)
Hi, everyone, welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Joining me on the show today is Mike Schmidt. We are going to be discussing a topic of the day, which is the Bitcoin Security Consortium. Now, as many of you may know, Mike is the executive director of Brink, which is a well-known Bitcoin development organization. Now, Mike today is joining, let's say, in the capacity as the volunteer coordinator for the Bitcoin Security Consortium, but obviously, it's going to be relevant. And of course, we're going to try to address some of the various issues of the day, or concerns that people are sharing. Is it, quote-unquote, big Bitcoin? Are there parallels to the New York Agreement or the Bitcoin Foundation and various things like this? Of course, we'll try to address those questions for listeners and people in the broader Bitcoin community, if you're a hodler, developer, etc.
So, Mike, welcome to the show. And let's just start with, what is the Bitcoin Security Consortium, in your own words?

**Mike Schmidt** (0:54)
Yeah, I think folks have probably been paying attention to the quantum discussions that have been happening increasingly the last year or two, particularly hitting a high point a few months ago. And I think that's when you saw Michael Saylor in strategy saying, hey, we're going to do something about this or we're going to put some resources towards this. And then since then, Coinbase has sort of come out with a quantum initiative and some other folks have been exploring this on the corporate side. And meanwhile, the engineers have increasingly on the mailing list, on delving, we've covered it in Bitcoin Optech, been executing a bunch of research and development work towards quantum potential mitigations and sort of discussions around that. And so I think what the Security Consortium is, is sort of the recognizing that this is a potential problem, this quantum thing, and businesses wanting to support that research and development that is going on. And I guess there's two pieces to that. One is actually funding and continuing this research and saying, hey, whoever's doing this research, just here's dollars to keep doing that research that you guys are doing.
And then the other piece would be maybe more for the consortium to help inform the broader Bitcoin ecosystem. And I sort of mean, you know, maybe the public, investors, you know, people who aren't on Bitcoin Twitter day to day, because a lot of the work that is being done, it hasn't really left our little bubble. And so I think they want to make sure that investors, the public, the media, you know, hodlers, investors are all aware of this work that is going on and being able to digest some of the technical stuff and then get that to a broader audience as well. Because right now, the quantum FUD kind of has dominated. So there's those two pieces to the consortium.

**Stephan Livera** (3:00)
And so let's just start with who is part of the consortium. Can we just list out the nine members and, you know, what's the main thing they're known for?

**Mike Schmidt** (3:10)
Yeah, sure. I want to make sure I bring it up so I don't forget anybody.
So in alphabetical order, no particular order other than that, there's Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity, Digital Assets specifically, Galaxy, and Strategy. So you can see, you know, there's a bunch of Bitcoin constituents in there, you know, including holders, financial institutions, custodians, and payment processors, etc.

**Stephan Livera** (3:42)
Yeah. And now the other big item there I see in the release is the $15 million member pledge over the next three years. So what can you tell us about that?

**Mike Schmidt** (3:55)
Yeah. So this, you know, a few of these organizations had been, you know, speaking with each other about this quantum issue. And, you know, that sort of was the genesis of the consortium. And they wanted somebody to help run the day-to-day activities. And they reached out to me to see if I would be interested in doing that.
And, you know, I spoke with representatives from each of the member companies to see if I thought that there could be good outcomes for Bitcoin that would come of this.
And part of, you know, then launching this thing was me heavily pushing for some version of proof of work with the announcement, right? So I think for Bitcoiners, they want to see some activity, you know, an announcement of an announcement, for example, you know, falls on deaf ears to, you know, Bitcoiners. And so I really pushed, what is something that this group can show as part of the announcement? You know, maybe it's not some deliverable per se, but what we decided on was getting the different member companies to pledge some amount over the next period of time. We decided on, you know, three years, which, you know, gives some runway to this long-term, you know, quantum issue. And so that's really where the 15 came from. That includes all of the nine members. That includes, you know, Spiral and Blockstream. Or, you know, I say Spiral, but Block is technically the member. But Spiral has been putting money towards security initiatives for many years, as part of their spend. And similarly to Blockstream, they've already been doing a lot of this cryptographic research. So that is, you know, the portions that are applicable to the consortium are in that number as well, as well as new monies from some of the other member companies.