A new set of mathematical results from OpenAI has prompted Ethereum researcher Justin Drake to warn that crypto holders may need to prepare for an unexpected threat to wallet security.
Drake said on Oct. 7 that the industry should consider a controlled move toward “bunker mode”: keeping digital assets in addresses whose public keys have not yet been exposed, while avoiding unnecessary transactions that could reveal them. His comments, reported by CryptoSlate, describe a worst-case scenario rather than an attack that has already been demonstrated.
The concern is that increasingly capable artificial intelligence could discover a classical mathematical shortcut for recovering private keys from public information. If that happened, an attacker might not need to wait for sufficiently powerful quantum computers to break the cryptography used by major blockchains.
Why OpenAI’s mathematics announcement matters
OpenAI said on Oct. 6 that an internal frontier model had produced a broad collection of new mathematical results. The company tested the system on thousands of problems, published many of its proofs with computer-checkable formalizations in Lean, and said the average result involved about three hours of ChatGPT Pro reasoning.
The announcement did not claim a practical attack against the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, or ECDSA, and did not report a method for breaking RSA. Drake’s suggestion that an effective ECDSA break could arrive “in months, not years” is a worst-case conjecture, not an established capability.
Still, Drake argued that the pace of AI-assisted mathematical discovery could challenge the assumptions behind crypto-security planning. The industry has generally viewed the risk to elliptic-curve systems as a long-term quantum-computing problem. His warning is that a powerful AI system might find a classical algorithm that makes private-key recovery dramatically easier before large, fault-tolerant quantum computers become practical.
He also pointed to the historical possibility that ideas associated with quantum algorithms can sometimes lead to faster classical approaches. In that context, he said researchers should remain open to the possibility of a classical counterpart to Shor’s algorithm, which would threaten both elliptic-curve cryptography and RSA. Whether such an algorithm exists remains unknown.
What exposed public keys mean for wallets
Bitcoin and Ethereum use elliptic-curve cryptography to establish ownership and authorize transactions. On Ethereum, standard externally owned accounts use ECDSA over the secp256k1 curve.
When one of these accounts sends a transaction, information published on the blockchain allows its public key to be reconstructed. An attacker who could efficiently derive the related private key could then attempt to control the account’s assets.
An unused standard Ethereum account has an additional protection because only an address, which is a hash of the public key, is visible. Drake therefore advised sophisticated holders to move most funds into addresses that have never signed transactions. After using such an address to send funds, he recommended moving any remaining balance into another fresh address.
The proposed measure is an interim precaution, not a replacement for stronger cryptography. Drake specifically urged major custodians to improve cold-storage practices and named Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex and Tether as firms that could lead such efforts.
The distinction between address types is important. Bitcoin Taproot outputs expose a public key from the beginning. Taproot uses Schnorr signatures rather than ECDSA, but both systems rely on the secp256k1 curve.
Migration plans face a difficult balance
Drake also called for stronger defenses around critical blockchain infrastructure. Oracles and layer-2 security councils could rotate ECDSA keys after signing messages or use existing signatures alongside hash-based systems such as SPHINCS.
For the longer term, he favors hash-based cryptography because it has less algebraic structure for a future AI system to exploit than elliptic-curve, lattice or isogeny-based systems. Ethereum’s post-quantum work already includes hash-based validator signatures, account abstraction and mechanisms intended to let individual accounts adopt different signature schemes without forcing an immediate network-wide migration.
The project’s core post-quantum infrastructure is currently targeted for roughly 2029, although that roadmap can change. Ethereum’s second annual post-quantum research retreat is scheduled for Oct. 9 to Oct. 12, and Drake said he plans to speak to institutional participants in London next month.
Drake warned that hurried transfers could create more risk than they remove. That caution reflects the operational difficulty of moving large pools of assets safely, even when the underlying motivation is defensive. His argument is instead that existing timelines should be reconsidered as AI changes the assumptions used to assess cryptographic risk.
Europol has separately warned that quantum computing could eventually undermine the cryptography protecting cryptocurrency wallets. The agency has urged the sector to prepare before the threat becomes practical, noting that upgrading systems and coordinating a response could take years.
Current crypto market picture
Moneyiar market data at 09:29 on Oct. 8, 2026, shows Bitcoin at $82,983.189054874, down 0.98% over 24 hours and 0.87% over seven days. Ethereum was trading at $2,561.3047272397, down 1.68% in 24 hours and 4.86% over seven days.
Shiba Inu stood at $0.0000054083, down 1.76% over 24 hours and 5.9% over seven days. Uniswap was priced at $7.7906146794, down 3.85% over 24 hours and 14.23% over seven days.
