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The quantum FUD makes no sense to me. The years-months before a private key is stolen, every single piece of traditionally encrypted information (banks, stocks, personal data, etc) would be vulnerable if not already gone. The financial system as we know it would collapse. Then, either bitcoins price goes near 0 to reflect the broader market in which case there isn’t even much incentive to steal anyone’s coins, or the market price skyrockets as it serves as the last form of digital property. In the latter case, we’d have a least a little bit of time to prepare quantum proof keys.
↩ replying to Jude
>banks, stocks, personal data, etc would be vulnerable Well no, because most banks are already well on the road to post-quantum. Most major browsers support hybrid PQC handshakes. Some larger banks have enabled this on their public-facing web servers. The backend cryptographic elements for most major banks are already PQC, and no major bank is going to non-PQC keys for any new internal project in 2026. As for personal info, Signal has migrated already (they started some years ago, being smart). Google drive is already protected by hybrid PCQ and well on the way to full. Just because the Bitcoin is by and large in denial, doesn't mean everyone else is.
↩ replying to Jude
You'd think so! The reality is that Bitcoin hasn't even chosen a key type yet, let alone put the wheels in motion for a protocol-wide transition. Everything is stuck in philosophical debates about if to upgrade at all, and if yes then how. And that's for bitcoiners talking about it at all, most are stuck on jpegs in the op return. Citibank, HSBC and the like are about 7 years ahead of Bitcoin at this point.
↩ replying to Joe 2.0
One of the primary solutions Bitcoin is supposed to solve is that it will evolve and be competitive forever, or at least as long as money is needed. In a world with quantum computation, unlimited energy, and abundance, money doesn’t serve as much of a purpose. Idk, half of the internet crashes whenever AWS or cloud flare goes down. Bitcoin is much more resilient then the rest of the internet infrastructure encryption aside.
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↩ replying to Jude
Unlimited energy would be a fun one, given that it'd violate the law of conservation of matter and energy. More energy through breakthroughs perhaps, but given that we still have parts of the planet using WOOD as their primary energy source (not even coal) the risk of a post scarcity energy economy seems far fetched at best. Even in Star Trek they needed to source dilithium to power their starships, despite having no use for gold, and the ability to send subspace transmissions. I'd bet on getting access to the pleasure planet of Risa long before infinite energy, or even enough to make money unnecessary.
↩ replying to Cykros
Game theory it out. As a pure thought experiment let’s say today there exits a military lab somewhere in Asia that just successfully tested a machine running 2.5k logical qubits (superconducting), 1 billion gates, whatever, key point it's enough to crack a key every hour or so, maybe 30 mins. And possible to make more. Their goal, as part of a wider strategem, is to end Bitcoin, collapse it, cause as much panic in the west as possible. What's their plan? How do the execute it? What happens when they do? What triggers what, and what cascades into what? When you game theory it out you quickly realise it’s not a case of some 20 % of outstanding coins returning to the supply, we all have coffee, tomorrow is another day. No no, it’s very bad. Here are some things to consider - They will have built up a supply of pre-cracked private keys to use all at once, for wallets with exposed pubkeys and the biggest balances - For anyone with funds in a wallet that does not have an exposed pubkey, as soon as they hit 'send' the pubkey is visible to the lab. - If the network is busy (which it certainly will be during a great panic) transactions can sit in the mempool for hours, even days. - The lab will announce (true or not) that they can actually crack wallet keys in 10 minutes, and will pay anyone [insert low about] for their bitcoin now, or steal it on first attempt to move, your choice. -And on and on. Add your own. Users are terrified to move their money. If you leave it, it might be stolen later. If you move it, it is stolen now. Desperate users try to outbid the hackers by setting $5k USD transaction fees to get their funds in a pubkey hidden wallet. The lab, with its infinite stolen coin, simply sets their theft-fee even higher. The mempool fills with millions of transactions that will never clear. People break their transactions into small bits hoping some will get through. This just increases the congestion. As the price collapses (which obviously it will) miners see the possibility they'll be hit with electricity bills they can't pay. The hash rate starts to drop off. With the hash rate in trouble the block time stretches even longer. This makes the sniper attack even more effective, as the lab has lots of time to crack a single key while a transaction sits in the frozen mempool. By the end of the first week, the lab don't just have some coins. They have effectively destroyed the consensus reality of the asset, a knockout blow from which Bitcoin cannot recover. This is of course a fantasy today. But it might not be a fantasy in 5 years, or 10 years. We are at 100 logical qubits, we need 2,000. That's not a huge jump. Gate numbers will move. Last month was a massive error-correction breakthrough over at Harvard. Other breakthroughs will happen. If at the time that this thought experiment vector actually exists and everything on the bitcoin side is just as it is today, well then, lights out. Even if such quantum tech has only a 20% chance of existing in the next 10 years, why tempt fate but delaying the migration? It'll take years anyway, why not make it the #1 priority from today?
↩ replying to Joe 2.0
I love your story. And I wholeheartedly agree with the game theory. You should write a book with that plot. It would be very entertaining and probably encourage devs to push updates. Couldn’t quantum also reenforce the hashing as well? Being an extremely efficient compute resource? I just listened to Stephen Perrenod and he claims google is on the order of 1000 physical qubits and 1-10 logical cubits. Assuming an aggressive moores law they should double logical qubits about every 1-2 years. This gives us a deadline of 10 years conservatively. We should probably push a solution in the next 5 years. He also reinforced that trad fi uses RSA and ECC and the quantum threat will actually incentivize movement *towards* Bitcoin, not away from it due to its antifragile nature.
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↩ replying to Joe 2.0
Not sure why the network would be busy when the only dangerous move would be sending a tx, particularly during a time with a full mempool. Meanwhile, this would be a very dedicated attack, and it'd be odd given how much more valuable so many other things are. Even at $1M bitcoin becomes a $20T asset. Global banking systems, nuclear launch codes, or heck, trusted trade secrets all become much more juicy targets, especially given that Bitcoin loses value dramatically in this scenario. Given that nation states need Bitcoin more than most plebs even do (whether they realize it yet or not -- to defease their debt) this nightmare situation just doesn't seem to reflect anyone's actual incentives.
↩ replying to Cykros
You cannot have a currency where one entity steals 30% - 50% of the entire supply in 24 hours and it retains its value. It is guaranteed to crash. Same as a body going in to shock. And this is just one game theory. There are 100 others. The community can try to poke little holes in them all -- or it just roll up sleeves and get to work migrating. What seems smarter?
↩ replying to Jude
Just depends, QuEra/Harvard ran fault tolerant algos on 96 logical qubits a couple weeks ago, error rate going down with scale, that was a shocker. Round two from that team early 2026 (trying to scale gates) could be a good indication. It's kinda funny, so many bitcoiners super bullish on emerging tech, gene editing, AI, nuclear fusion .. except when it comes to quantum then suddenly everyone turns Amish.
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#2 is more likely. #1 moment it is detected that $400B worth of BTC is suddenly moving for no obvious reason, that $400B shrinks to maybe $400M. Making it far below profitability burning a one-time surprise attack opportunity exposing the existence of a powerful enough QC and even despite this occurring, Bitcoin will survive. It will be messy for a bit but nothing insurmountable once it's apparent a powerful QC exists (Grubles, notgrubles…. And I agree). β€œIt's so obvious these posts are trying soo hard to make a big deal out of this.”
Neither. If the USG steals MicroStrategy’s coins, it would spark the largest self-custody insurgence in Bitcoin’s history. Mt. Gox and FTX would pale in comparison. Controllers fear self-custody above all else because it hinders domestication. They’ve made significant progress towards this goal over the last few years, and a move like that would brutally remind people why β€œnot your keys, not your coins” exist in the first place. View quoted note β†’
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A high profile billionaire using a KYC exchange or a pseudonymous 'someone' via an unsignaled quantum break - specifically targeting Satoshis? I think a seizure of Saylors (Strategy) stack makes for a bigger statement given the amount of time he's spent building, it would knock the wind out of the whole community. Plus, both would be state level attacks. Saylor could be 1 administration change away from government theft, quantum could be 10 years away.