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In the crypto community, a heated discussion continues about the future of Bitcoin security after Google announced a significant breakthrough in quantum computing this week, which has worsened forecasts for the security of the Bitcoin network and brought closer expectations of the so-called Q-Day — the day when a quantum computer will be able to break Bitcoin keys.
The current debate has involved Adam Back, the CEO of Blockstream, and well-known analyst Willy Woo regarding the fate of 4 million inactive BTC, which may become vulnerable with the arrival of Q-Day.
Save them or let them be stolen?
At the moment, demonstrators operate with two logical qubits on a single physical architecture. However, according to Back, the real breaking of Bitcoin cryptography still lacks four to six orders of magnitude in power.
Willy Woo, despite the technological gap, emphasizes that a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the market. The issue concerns approximately 4 million BTC on old addresses whose owners lost their keys or passed away. If a quantum computer can brute-force access to these wallets, these coins could suddenly return to the market, creating massive movement and pressure on the Bitcoin price.
Thus, according to Woo, Bitcoin faces an existential choice:
- Freeze coins and programmatically prohibit movement of funds from old vulnerable wallets, which, however, means changing fundamental monetary policy and interfering with property rights, directly contradicting the core principles on which Bitcoin was created 17 years ago.
- Leave everything as it is and allow quantum hackers to steal the coins, which would obviously lead to a massive price collapse.
Woo noted that BTC should not abandon a user, even if that person is in a 12-year prison sentence, and it should be possible to upgrade a wallet to a quantum-resistant standard. In this case, Woo votes in favor of freezing the coins.
Adam Back's brutal response
Legendary cryptographer Adam Back, however, took a position of strict adherence to decentralization principles and responded to his opponent’s concerns with the idea that those who did not take care of their wallet security in advance are already exposed.
Back’s logic is as follows. If a quantum computer appears, the coins will be stolen by hackers, and this is a market event, not a decision for developers. Any attempt by developers to decide which coins are valid and which are not is itself a form of a rug pull.
According to Back, as the quantum threat becomes more realistic, people will realize that code immutability is more important than attempts to artificially save old wallets. Security is the personal responsibility of the owner, not a function of centralized control over the protocol.
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
Vladislav Sopov
