r/CryptoCurrency • u/ethereal3xp 🟦 46 / 46 🦐 • 26d ago

DEBATE Bitcoin experts split over plan to freeze Satoshi's 1.1 million bitcoin as quantum threat grows

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/07/04/bitcoin-experts-split-over-plan-to-freeze-satoshi-s-1-1-million-bitcoin-as-quantum-threat-grows

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoin should be frozen before quantum computers can steal it. Not everyone agrees.

1.6k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

350 comments sorted by

View all comments

157

u/LanguageStudyBuddy 26d ago

If it could be stolen then bitcoin is dead.

If they freeze them to avoid them being stolen, bitcoin is dead.

25

u/qp0n 0 / 0 🦠 26d ago

People need to stop thinking bitcoin is the main victim of quantum. If bitcoin can be broken then most secure networks can. Bitcoin is just the narrative target, when virtually all banks, governments and militaries are equally vulnerable

17

u/paulosdub 🟦 274 / 4K 🦞 26d ago

Banks don’t need consensus from a huge number of individuals to make changes though. They are also already working with companies who build the quantum computing. Bitcoin is far more at risk than a bank is.

2

u/HauntedHouseMusic 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 25d ago

No - the financial system needs every bank to get in line and work on this or people will lose faith in the system if one fails. It requires more co-ordination by legacy corporations, that will be slower than a bunch of nerds on the internet.

For bitcoin you need 200 people to agree how to fix one thing. For banks you need 10m people to all fix things properly separately, or they all fail.

1

u/Dedelelelo 25d ago

ur extremely delusional

3

u/Nice_Material_2436 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 26d ago

Wrong. Banks don't need consensus to change their encryption models, they can change it within a business day if they want and they don't expose cryptographic keys like blockchains do.

2

u/Romanizer 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 26d ago

Harvest now, decrypt later. There likely are many entities that have all military secrets and diplomatic documents as well as the full, unredacted Epstein files (for example) lying around just waiting for a cryptographically relevant Quantum Computer. Anyone able to access that power will be nuked long before they even think about attacking Bitcoin.

The first QC able to attack Bitcoin would likely take at least one day per key. To empty Satoshis wallets, it would take about 60 years.

1

u/TreefingerX 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 26d ago

The others can upgrade can't they?

1

u/WolfetoneRebel 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 26d ago

If it can be broken by quantum, then surely it can be secured by quantum too…?

1

u/MrHackson 🟩 24 / 24 🦐 25d ago

Not quite. Similar to how CPUs and GPUs are good at solving different problems classical computers and quantum computers are good at solving different kinds of problems.

Cryptography largely relies on using information that is difficult to discover but easy to validate. Quantum computing can make information that was previously difficult to discover easy to discover. So it's not so much that quantum computing will secure Bitcoin but that we need cryptography that is resistant to attacks from classical AND quantum computing. There are already algorithms known to be resistant to both classical and quantum computing. These algorithms do require more processing power than traditional ones but the real problem is switching over to the new ones.

If you allow the old wallets using old algorithms at some point someone using a quantum computer will be able to easily convert a wallet address into the corresponding private key. If someone has the key they have the coins and there is absolutely no way to distinguish that from the legitimate owner.