Back in 2018, Nic Carter famously created the “Bitcoin FUD Dice.”
It was a 12-sided die covered in the same recycled headlines.
Critics could just roll it, transcribe the result, and publish their next hit piece.
“High fees.” “Energy waste.” “Toxic fans.”
Add enough together and you’ve got a solid piece for Medium.
Which is why this week feels so incredibly ironic.
Because Nic just reached back into that FUD bag and pulled out the ultimate Bitcoin boogeyman: Quantum Computing.
In a new piece that lit the Bitcoin timeline on fire, Carter argues that quantum is no longer sci-fi.
We’ve moved past the theoretical; now, he says, a breakthrough is just a "matter of engineering."
According to his research, a functional, scaled quantum computer could arrive as early as the late 2020s.
And if a "cryptographically relevant" computer arrives faster than we expect?
It could, in theory, rip private keys from exposed public keys and turn vulnerable addresses into a $600 billion honeypot.
But Nic aims his biggest shots at the Bitcoin developers.
He argues that even if a fix exists, the Bitcoin community is too slow, too fractured, and too head-in-the-sand to coordinate a migration before the clock runs out.
But... wouldn’t you know it? There’s money involved.
Carter also disclosed that his VC firm, Castle Island Ventures, just led a $6 million seed round into a post-quantum company called Project 11.
This has the "Toxic Bitcoiners" from his FUD dice asking a simple question: Is this a legitimate warning, or is it "FUD-as-a-Service" to pump a portfolio company?
So, how do we, as people with a deep vested interest in this network, think about Quantum without being FUD-ed out of our bags?
Quantum is undoubtedly a theoretical threat to elliptic curve cryptography.
But it’s also a threat with wildly uncertain timelines.
The true test for Bitcoin is whether this community can respond calmly, deliberately, and early.
That requires two things:
One: Personal On-Chain Hygiene.
Stop reusing addresses. Avoid leaking public keys. These are things you can do today to make yourself a harder target without touching a single line of Bitcoin's code.
Two: The Escape Hatch.
We need to research post-quantum signatures and start drafting contingency BIPs. We need to give this ecosystem years, not months, to coordinate.
Short-term panic weakens Bitcoin, but denying a real possibility will get you blindsided.
The middle path of adversarial thinking, slow changes, and relentless preparation is how Bitcoin went from a post on a mailing list to a $2 trillion asset.
