The ctrl/shift Summit 2026 concluded Sunday at Villa Doria d'Angri in Naples, drawing attention to the growing threat quantum computing poses to cryptocurrency infrastructure. The three-day conference, organized by NapulETH, featured dedicated sessions on post-quantum cryptography and included presentations from Bitcoin Suisse, Quantum Qustody, and a University of Oxford quantum specialist. The European Commission's own roadmap calls for EU member states to start transitioning to post-quantum cryptography by the end of this year.
A summit built around cross-disciplinary risk
Andrea Paesano, the event lead at ctrl/shift, said quantum security exemplifies the summit's cross-disciplinary purpose. The conference, which ran from June 13 to 15, placed the topic alongside other panels covering ETF/ETP institutional access and tokenization. Luisa Fischietti, Fabio Massellani, and Marcello Coppo were listed among speakers for the institutional access track, while Chiara El Rikabi, Damiano Bonazzi, and Antonio Annino discussed tokenization.
‘Security in a Post-Quantum World’ and Bitcoin's path forward
Sohil Tiwari, CEO and co-founder of Quantum Qustody and a former APAC/Canada CFO at Mastercard and American Express, presented a session called “Security in a Post-Quantum World.” The summit also featured Wolfgang Amadeus Vitale, PhD, a crypto protocol expert at Bitcoin Suisse, who gave a talk titled “The Road to Post-Quantum Bitcoin.” Fabrizio Romano Genovese, who holds a PhD in Quantum Information Theory from Oxford, presented “(Almost?) Practical Public-Key Quantum Money With Low Quantum Resources.”
Why quantum threats are no longer theoretical
Google Quantum AI published updated estimates in March 2026 suggesting future attacks on elliptic-curve cryptography could require fewer resources than previously thought. That kind of recalculation pushes the timeline for safe migration forward for blockchain networks that rely on ECDSA and similar signing schemes. European regulators are already signaling urgency: the European Commission's roadmap mandates that member states begin adopting post-quantum cryptography by the end of 2026.
The summit arrives as the industry faces a concrete deadline. Whether Bitcoin can adapt without a hard fork, and whether exchanges and custody providers can upgrade their key infrastructure fast enough, remains an open question that speakers like Vitale and Tiwari aimed to address on stage.
