Former Wall Street trader Josh Mandell has made waves on the X social media platform by claiming that old Bitcoins are currently being stolen from long-dormant ("deceased") wallets.
Mandell, who gained a lot of prominence earlier this year with his extremely prescient Bitcoin price prediction, argues that the tech is being secretly used by a "large player" to accumulate more BTC without using the market.
The former Salomon Brothers and Caxton Associates trader believes that on-chain analysis remains the only obstacle given that it would be capable of detecting such patterns.
"Zero chance"
The outlandish and ridiculous theory has been obviously met with strong pushback and mockery within the Bitcoin community.
"There is literally no chance this is currently happening," Harry Beckwith, founder of Hot Pixel Group, said in a social media statement.
Matthew Pines, executive director at Bitcoin Policy Institute, claims that Mandell's assumption is "false."
"That’s enough computer time for you today, grandpa," another commentator quipped.
Future threat
Breaking Bitcoin's cryptography would require millions of stable, error-corrected qubits.
Even though quantum computing has made significant progress over the past year with Microsoft’s Majorana 1 chip and Google's Willow, the technology is nowhere near close to posing a threat to the largest cryptocurrency.
That said, some experts believe that quantum computing might indeed become powerful enough to pose a threat to Bitcoin within 20 years from now.
As reported by U.Today, Jameson Lopp, a prominent cypherpunk, previously made a case for burning quantum-vulnerable Bitcoins.
He also predicted that large-scale quantum-powered theft could potentially crash the price of the leading cryptocurrency.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team