As per the title of this reddit thread, there are only two routes to take when entering a post quantum world: Freezing or Seizing. It's also important for us to have these conversations without vitriol, contempt, or memes for someone with an opposing perspective.
Personally, I've been too busy with my 3 jobs and trying to pay the bills to really pay attention to what is going on in this area of the bitcoin sphere. This also, technically isn't really my problem since my bitcoin is in a post-quantum-enabled wallet address. Last I checked, there was a drafted BIP proposal from Jameson Lopp that suggests we lock a group of wallet addresses that encompasses "satoshi era" wallets. These start with a specific prefix, denoted by the table here: https://imgur.com/a/iMMWc1r
More technical reading:
https://bip360.org/bip360.html
This is less than 1% of all bitcoin wallet addresses, citing Jameson Lopp in a speech from a year prior. 1% is not a lot of wallet addresses. Some people estimate that between 3 to 6 million bitcoin were completely forgotten about by early miners from 2009 to 2012 when it was relatively easy to get a block reward of 50 BTC. If we see those stolen and sold it could cause a black swan and we could get cheaper bitcoin, right?
More concretely, however, the hypotheticals below are worth discussing:
- A company claims to have reached quantum supremacy. Should they or should they not demonstrate they can move satoshi's coins and send them to a quantum-proof burner wallet as an altruistic and harmless demonstration of power?
- A guy threw away his PC in 2010. He mined 10,000 BTC. He still knows the wallet address. Should he or should he not team up with a quantum-supreme company to recover those 10,000 BTC?
- North Korea / Russia / Iran build a quantum PC that can get Satoshi's coins. Should they or should they not steal the coins and use them as they please?
- Silk-road era bitcoin wallets stopped moving btc after the dark net marketplace was shut down. Some of it was sellers who changed their ways. Some of it was addicts (some of which who got clean, others who didnt). They want to recover their BTC, so they team up with some quantum computing enterprises to recover their BTC. Should they be able to?
In conclusion, the dichotomy is "Freezing or Seizing" and no in-between. Which should be done and why do you think so?
Satoshi's Coins: Freezing or Seizing? How do we respond to Quantum Supremacy in the coming years.
byu/sgtslaughterTV inCryptoCurrency
11 Comments
It’s only speculation that that are all satoshis wallets, what if some early programming has been holding long term for retirement and his funds get borked because some people assume he was satoshi?
I thought a core value of crypto was decentralization? Why can a small group of people with a biased interest control the fate of those funds at all?
Just like anybody else with crypto funds, if those wallets were satoshis…. They can do with them what they want. That’s ownership. Maybe they chose to leave them as a reward for future quantum computation events? Can you prove otherwise? Maybe the funds are in somebody’s control that for whatever reason hasn’t chose to move them yet(like the elephant in room that the market would panic)
If ‘Quantum Supremacy’ happens BTC is dead. I’m not sure why anybody would suggest otherwise.
The Hardness of Bitcoin is what gives it its strength. If that is compromised all is finished. Normies would never expose their money to that risk.
Peter Schiff would have a field day. He’d argue that if compromised once, Bitcoin can be compromised again – and he’d be right. Gold would triumph as the safe storage/hedge against inflation.
Imagine going to an asset class manager and saying, ‘Oh, yeah, Bitcoin can be hacked and the early investors lost everything, but we’ve fixed it now.’ It would be over. The optics alone would finish it.
There is an argument regarding abandoned property here that could be applied to the oldest of wallets potentially one day.
I think if quantum supremacy were or ever becomes possible, that major bitcoin holders and early adopters would band together to make a decision of how to go forward (similar to what has happened in the past related to major adoption obstacles)
We respond by taking BTC back to over 100K, please and thank you.
That’s the CIAs wallet
If the U.S. did it we all know what would happen with it. If another country did it it might improve quality of life for people in that country. It’s highly doubtful that it would be used to improve quality of life but I would rather see it used there than a country to make the 1% rich richer and used for some corporate corruption in some way or to pay some goons or thugs to do dirty work for the U.S.
There is a good proposal with BIP360 to Deal with quantum threat for BTC, I personally hold also some quantum Secure coins as a Hedge
this feels way too theoretical rn like even if quantum gets there it would probably get patched way before anything like that happens so freezing or seizing is kinda jumping ahead
What about early Bitcoin holders who timelocked BTC for their children for when they turn say 18. Shall we just confiscate those too?
Neither. Hourglass
https://github.com/cryptoquick/bips/blob/hourglass-v2/bip-hourglass-v2.mediawiki
As soon as people implement freezing or seizing of coins, Bitcoin will most likely have a consensus fork.
Seizure would signal that private keys or coin control can be overridden which could severely damage trust in Bitcoin’s censorship-resistance and predictability. A protocol mechanism that targets specific UTXOs would represent centralizing power (who decides, how enforced). That precedent could motivate forks and community splits. Many users and miners who oppose seizure would likely reject the change, creating a contentious hard fork and two competing chains.