Quantum computing isn’t advanced enough to exploit this vulnerability, but future advancements could make quantum attacks on these coins feasible.
Is Freezing Satoshi’s 1M BTC a “Safeguard” against Quantum Threats?
Advancements in quantum computing have raised concerns about the security of Bitcoin’s earliest transaction formats, sparking renewed debate over the fate of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1 million BTC.
These coins were stored using an old system called pay-to-public-key (P2PK), which exposes their public keys on the blockchain.
Unlike the more secure modern P2PKH format, Bitcoin’s older P2PK transactions expose public keys. Quantum computers that could derive private keys from these exposed public ones.
Currently, quantum computing isn’t advanced enough to exploit this vulnerability, but future advancements could make quantum attacks on these coins feasible. This risk has sparked discussions about whether preventative measures should be taken to secure Satoshi’s holdings.
Emin Sirer, the CEO of Ava Labs, believes freezing Satoshi’s 1 million BTC is a necessary step to protect the market. While others argue it contradicts Bitcoin’s core principles of decentralization and immutability. Regardless, the coins remain an attractive target for quantum attackers, which could cause significant disruptions in the market.
Developers would need to change Bitcoin’s rules to prevent specific unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) from being spent to freeze Satoshi’s Bitcoins. This would entail creating a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) to identify the vulnerable P2PK UTXOs associated with Satoshi’s currencies and requesting community acceptance.
The freeze could be implemented through a soft fork (optional updates for users) or a hard fork (a complete change to Bitcoin’s code). While technically possible, such a move would require widespread agreement, which has always been difficult to achieve in the Bitcoin community.
The freezing of Satoshi’s Bitcoin raises fundamental questions regarding the underlying principles of cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin was designed as an immutable record, which means no one should be able to change its history. Freezing Satoshi’s coins through a fork would violate this principle, potentially paving the way for future interventions and jeopardizing decentralization for the Bitcoin blockchain.
Some suggest that Satoshi’s coins are an outlier due to their exposure to the old P2PK format, which could have major ramifications for the broader market if quantum computing becomes a danger. With the possibility of a quantum attack on this 1 million BTC, some speculate that Satoshi may be forced to expose the identity in order to address the situation.