Ledger Co-Founder Adam Back Reacts to Claude AI's ECDSA Discovery

Precedent & Market Context

A coalition of nine blockchain organizations has formed to address the growing threat of quantum computers compromising the digital signatures protecting cryptocurrency wallets. The Quantum Alliance aims to establish common security standards to mitigate this threat, which could have far-reaching implications for the crypto market.

Main Event

Nicolas Bacca, co-founder of Ledger, commented in an X post after Claude revealed the origins of the ECDSA curve, saying "Checkmate Satoshi" in what seems to be a playful statement. In under half an hour, Claude discovered the origins of the NIST P-192, P-224, P-256, P-384, and P-521 seeds, with this reported on October 16, 2026. None of them were the results of any hash algorithm at all, but rather the output of the C library's lrand48 random-number generator, seeded with a Unix timestamp.

Analysis & Market Impact

Blockstream CEO Adam Back subsequently weighed in on the discussion, saying, "That's the NSA's fault for not revealing the reproducible steps to generate their NIST published curves." Bacca responded, saying, "Right, but it still made a good joke." The discovery highlights the need for greater transparency and cooperation between governments, industry leaders, and cryptographers.

Implications & Outlook

The discovery does not make ECDSA less secure, but it does make backdoors less plausible. Some believe Satoshi probably chose secp256k1 instead of the NSA's P-256 because of this mystery, as it might be easier to trust the number 7 (the coefficient in secp256k1) than the coefficient in P-256. The formation of the Quantum Alliance is a significant development in the blockchain and crypto space, highlighting the need for cooperation and collaboration to address the growing threat of quantum computers.