Michael Saylor from MicroStrategy is raising concerns that the biggest danger to Bitcoin comes from those looking to push for protocol changes.
Honestly, Saylor seems to have a solid point. Just picture this: a new protocol gets introduced to protect Bitcoin from quantum computers stealing it, but what if that protocol has its own vulnerabilities?
I don't think Saylor will be taken into account when it comes to deciding what changes should or shouldn't be made at the protocol level. Let's remember that what he has done is offer centralized exposure to Bitcoin through his company, which, if it continues at this rate, will reach one million Bitcoins in a few years.
Although what you are saying does not seem crazy in principle, as far as we know today, the addresses that exist today from which you have not spent Bitcoin are safe from quantum risk. However, if any changes are implemented in the future, they will be well studied; changes are not implemented lightly. What you cannot do is not make changes to improve in case they have any flaws.
He is so concerned about this not because he knows about it, but because his company depends entirely on Bitcoin, so that if it is disrupted, he will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. It is quite normal for him to be so concerned about this because it is possible that there could be a loophole that could cause Bitcoin to be disrupted and cause panic in the market - and not only him, but also everyone who cares about Bitcoin is paying attention to this matter. But developing a quantum-resistant protocol takes a time, and before it is approved, the Bitcoin community and developers are still more focused on observing the development of quantum technology itself.
So it's okay for him to express his concerns, but he shouldn't be overly skeptical of Bitcoin's protocol changes. This isn't the first time a protocol change has been made to Bitcoin, and every major update is always a lengthy process.
Well I'm skeptical about his concern as bitcoin new proposed protocol is only going to threaten his investment in bitcoin and whatsoever personal interest he has but yet not withstanding he could be right even though he has caused bitcoin some level of oversight in terms of having so much in his disposal and making his decision count so much unlike the way we know bitcoin to be so decentralised that it takes a community opinion to shake the bitcoin world but now one man decisions or thought can affect us all but yet I'm not so afraid of quantum computing as a threat to bitcoin because I believe that we have come too far for all that, once it gets to that stage there will be a solution.
The article title is based on a 11 word Tweet posted by Saylor. I am very curious to know why you believe Saylor has this much knowledge, excluding of course that he is purchasing a ton of Bitcoin and there is a cult like community surrounding him like some kind of deity.
Internal changes may pose a large risk of course, but Bitcoin has so far had a lot of changes and any problem there appeared was immediately fixed as soon as possible. External risks are still there and in my sole opinion, they can not be compared. Internal risks are at least some what predictable. As in the worst thing that can happen is a flaw in the code. External risks are many and some of them are very unpredictable.
I do not know what we would prefer, predictability and easy solutions or external risks that require a significant change in the protocol. Quantum Computer risks may be avoidable. Code flaws can be fixed. But have you considered there may some day be an external risk a complex change in the code can not fix?
Well if the community doesn't accept or follow the chain of that change then it means nothing
But if they do it means they saw a reason to trust after imo verification.
This is why something they call testing and reviews exist
With the speed changes are made in Bitcoin
You can tell it would take alot of time and scrutiny before any change will be made.
I dont think Saylor needs to be treated as an authority figure for the point to be valid. The concern isnt who is saying it, but whether Bitcoins incentive structure makes ambitious protocol changes especially risky.
Internal changes are predictable in the sense that they happen within known rules, but that doesnt necessarily make them safer. Changes made in response to hypothetical future threats (like quantum resistance) carry asymmetric risk: if you get them wrong, you may introduce a real vulnerability today to solve a theoretical one tomorrow.
External risks are harder to model, I agree, but they also dont require social coordination in advance. Internal changes do, and thats where governance friction and human incentives matter most. Bitcoins history suggests that it tends to survive external pressure better than internal attempts to improve it quickly.
That doesnt mean protocol changes should never happen, only that the bar for them should be extremely high, especially when the threat is uncertain and the cure could be worse than the disease.
Technology is always advancing, so we can only keep up with the changes and rely on developers to make improvements to stay secure in the era of quantum computers. That will come, but not in the near future. Not for the next 5-10 years. However, preparing early is indeed a good solution. The quantum issue is still widely debated as to when it will emerge. Sometimes, big players in the market take advantage of it to move the market. So we don't need to panic; I am confident that developers will definitely make changes to be anti-quantum computer.
I believe this will not happen; Bitcoin is not built to become like this. Plus, Michael Saylor is also a tech entrepreneur, and he knows what he is saying. Before he started to accumulate Bitcoin, he already have big tech company, from which he already got enough knowledge to give his comments like these.
The example stated by the news isn't related with QC risk at all. Although i can see someone attempt to slip additional changes beside adding QC resistant cryptography/address on their proposal.
This part of the news is rather important. NIST already finalize few QC-resistant cryptography since 2024[1], but AFAIK none of them widely used today.
[1] https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography
It is clear that you have zero knowledge on this topic and just wrote an useless shitpost to get another count on your signature campaign. What a low life tool you are.
I find it very strange that this is how you decided to start your response on this thread. Saylor can be criticized for some things, but what he wrote about this topic is the most correct view on the subject matter at hand. Have you not seen that opportunists trying to change Bitcoin for the worse has been a recurring theme of attack on Bitcoin since the ages, using any number of different topics that were relevant at the respective time? Hearn, Garzik, Anderesen, Ver, Wright, and many other names come to mind. They all wanted to change it in one way or another, for the worse, to suit themselves or their agendas. Did you forget that Hearn wanted to implement protocol level blacklisting? Now you have CSAM-obseseed luke-jr who is trying to do the same as these guys, abuse an opportunity to implement changes and gain control over the protocol.
The danger from quantum computers is not yet at all cryptographic, the danger is precisely what Saylor is talking about. As the FUD continues to mount and raise the anxiety of users that don't know better, and this includes 99.99% of the users of this forum, the risk of an opportunist using this to their advantage becomes greater.
How about actually giving examples for external risks that you are talking about? I can also talk about them in general that way, with half of my brain being asleep. The audience will thank you.
I think you have misunderstood the point of his post, but many have. It is not that this is a new threat, or that it is entirely related to QCs. Instead he means to say that the biggest threat in the debate with QCs so far is that people will abuse it to try to gain an advantage over it. Luke-jr is doing it already with the OP_RETURN fake news, and that is a much weaker topic than QCs. Therefore, it stands to reason that this could or is the biggest threat from QCs right now -- not the cryptographic perspective. Furthermore, he is absolutely correct that protocol ossification has always been Bitcoin's primary defense. Look at the example names that I brought up in bold above. Each person turned out to be a shady and corrupt individual, no matter what their prior contributions to Bitcoin were.
The problem is that this is less significant than you think. Just because NIST has finalized some cryptography that doesn't mean that it is actually going to work or that it going to be applicable to or usable in Bitcoin. Even I could develop a QC-resistant protocol given enough time, it is just going to be terrible and would nuke our TPS to near 0.
As it was said already.. I do think it's mostly about his own view on the matter and that his entire business depends on it.
He wants for things to stay the same and have all the same abilities to do accumulation, if not more
i actually had no idea who exactly he is as far as how he is involved in bitcoin. but i agree with his statement which is something i rarely hear people say because they're busy worrying about more mundane thing like bitcoin price.
i wouldn't even say it needed to be an "opportunist" it could be a group of people who had the very best of intentions but F***ed things up. yes there's peer review and checks and balances but still. when you hold billions of dollars of something you tend to worry alot about how things could go wrong maybe. and obviously he has done that.
Fair point, although some of those are categorized as signature cryptography which should be applicable in Bitcoin. And as someone with little cryptography knowledge, finalization from NIST, IETF or other major group is better than nothing.
Or increase hardware requirement to run full node by choosing cryptography that's computationally expensive to create/verify.
people listen to KOLers daily, but I wouldn't see as good or bad.. just as a fact that people always have ears for those they like or want to hear.
I started using X fewer times and my head is much more better than it was
Strategy's accumulation is estimated at 712,647 BTC which is worth approximately $63 billion, so it is not actually a question of millions. I understand his interest to protect his biggest asset because he would be heavily affected if anything goes wrong.
In his statement "There are lots of protocol changes that actually destabilize the network" Which is true because various ambitions of the devs which might be in good intention might end up leaving behind a very big flaw.
This is why BIP gets reviewed publicly and even when accepted, changes take a long time and are scrutinized properly by different independent organizations over a long period to validate efficiency before being merged to the code.
I believe if the threats of quantum computing start getting more realistic which for now is still in it's baby stages. The devs would pick out the most appropriate solution from the many proposals present and proceed with its implementation to protect the network.
It's because the question moves forward to his own domain, so to speak, you are right.
And why not show for the public that you yourself care about the topic? There are few cons to such a move.
My eyes were opened after reading Hijacking Bitcoin, which I believe Satofan44 was referencing (or at least Satofan44 is aware of the problems bitcoin has/has had with respect to who has control of the protocol based on the names he dropped). Saylor may own a shit ton of bitcoin, but unless he's connected to the bitcoin dev team and has any influence over them he can't do a damn thing.
It must be frustrating, yes. But hey, if you very quickly make a publicly-traded software company a proxy for bitcoin ownership, any lost sleep is of your own doing.
I've been hearing centralized/decentralized terms thrown around for years, and the latter has been treated as if it's some mythical path to societal utopia or some such thing. The aspect of decentralization that's crucial to bitcoin lies with the miners, no? Just because Michael Saylor owns more bitcoin than is IMO responsible for a person in his particular situation to own doesn't make anything about bitcoin better or worse; the phrase 'centralized exposure to bitcoin' could apply to a BTC ETF or a publicly-traded mining operation. The bitcoin might be concentrated in those investments for those who choose to put their money in them, but 'centralized' doesn't seem to be a necessary descriptor--which in fact sounds pejorative.
Or maybe I just need some sleep.
You are only partially right with this claim, it is not even necessary about continuing his accumulation but bad actors could destroy what he has already achieved so far.
It could be, but with Bitcoin this kind of fuck up has a very low chance of happening -- probably one of the lowest among all software that is being developed. It did happen before albeit rarely, nevertheless we are talking about a very specific topic here so general fuck ups don't count. Some paths towards quantum resistance are already clear, the only thing left to do is choose the signature algorithm but it sounds simpler than it is. The other issue are old coins that will remain vulnerable, but I don't think that we are likely to reach a consensus on any extreme measure there.
You are right, although I was not necessarily referring to the type of cryptography that is why I later used the example of 0 TPS. All signature cryptography that increases the size of the signature or cost of verification by several magnitudes does not apply to Bitcoin, it can not be used. Therefore, while there are already a few candidates for QS-safe signature cryptography, most are not applicable at all. There was a page on Github hosted somewhere that was had a comparison of each algorithm based on signature size, creation, verification cost and such, but I am unable to find it now. If someone does find something like that please post it or DM me.
It is frustrating, but that is part of the path of learning what it means to be actually decentralized, permissionless and controlled by nobody. Many humans parrot words to each other as if they understand them to avoid looking dumb (on X, here, and in real life), but I can guarantee you that less than 10% of people in crypto overall truly understand what any of those really mean and what their implications are. Coming from a world that is completely centralized and abusive in every conceivable way, where power or wealth always gives you at least some sort of control, it is quite a shocking cognitive dissonance to the brain to learn that there is another way, a much better way. It is called Bitcoin.
Yes, and also no. Any kind of centralization creates their own attack vectors. There are some things that you can do with node centralization, and there are other things which are worse that you can do with a centralization of miners. However, this is if you look at the system from a purely technological perspective and fail to understand how it actually works. If miners collude tomorrow, in a few days they will have destroyed billions and billions of their own wealth and accomplished nothing as the network hard forks to a new algorithm. It does not accomplish anything. Bitcoin would be wounded, it would survive and continues as it always has. A centralization attack is just economic suicide, one would have to be extremely stupid to burn that amount of wealth to accomplish absolutely nothing. Temporary weakening of Bitcoin does not do anything, we have seen it with the fork wars. Either you defeat Bitcoin or it continues and gets significantly stronger while you become obsolete.
The other part of this story, which was not applicable historically before, is that you are no longer allowed to do this. As Bitcoin continues to get regulated and integrated into the system, doing an attack like this will be extremely illegal and cause your own ruin. Therefore, the miner collusion attack vector is mostly gone. Give it a couple of years more, perhaps a decade, and it will be a theoretical consideration of the past.