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The decade-long narrative of Bitcoin as "digital gold" is facing its most significant structural challenge yet. Renowned on-chain analyst Willy Woo, in a recent X post, warned that Bitcoin has broken a 12-year valuation trend relative to gold, citing a looming "Quantum Discount" that could suppress prices for years.
Four million BTC supply shock
Historically, Bitcoin has aggressively outpaced gold in value — by 76,231,860% according to ICE chart on TradingView. However, Woo observes that this relationship has decoupled just as the global "long-term debt cycle" reaches its peak. While macro investors typically flee to hard assets during debt deleveraging, gold is "mooning" while Bitcoin remains tethered.
The culprit? "Q-Day" — the point at which quantum computers become powerful enough to crack the cryptographic signatures protecting the network.
The primary fear is not just Bitcoin network security but a massive liquidity event, as Woo points out that roughly four million "lost" Bitcoins — untouched for years and often belonging to early adopters and even the creator of the cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto — could become vulnerable. If quantum technology can unlock these wallets, those coins would effectively return to circulation.
To put the scale in perspective:
- Total enterprise/ETF accumulation since 2020: 2.8 million BTC.
- Total "lost" coins at risk: 4 million BTC.
Woo estimates that this potential supply represents eight years of enterprise accumulation hitting the market at once.
While Bitcoin can be patched with quantum-resistant signatures, Woo argues this does not solve the "lost coin" dilemma. He places a 75% probability that the network will fail to freeze these legacy coins via a hard fork, meaning the market must now price in this risk.
With Q-Day estimated to be 5 to 15 years away, BTC may trade with a cloud over its head during the very decade it is most needed as a sovereign hedge. For investors, this "Quantum Discount" suggests that while gold rallies on macro fears, Bitcoin's path to new heights remains complicated by its own technological evolution.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin