We're reaching a point where we need to tackle this issue head-on. I feel like Ethereum is taking a pretty centralized route to "fix" this, like locking old accounts and even rolling back the blockchain when problems arise. But honestly, that goes against what Bitcoin stands for.
On the tech side, creating new wallet addresses that can resist quantum attacks isn't that tough, and moving our funds to these new addresses should be doable. But the old wallet addresses that are just sitting there can't make that switch by themselves.
So, it seems like those addresses will eventually get compromised. Instead of locking them down which is totally not the Bitcoin way we could think about:
- Forming a sort of "ethical" coalition with leading quantum tech firms, publicly.
- Getting everyone in the coalition to agree that when they do hack any of those old addresses, they send the funds to a non-existent address (basically burning the coins).
This way, anyone who refuses to be part of the coalition or accept our terms gets exposed. And for those who do join, it could serve as good publicity for them.
Sure, we can’t guarantee that some might pull a fast one behind our backs, but at least we made an effort.
What do you think?
What? That's crazy! I don't want to use a blockchain where they can lock my account when I didn't do anything wrong. How is that different from using an exchange like Binance? Or Tether USD?
So just leave them that way. Abandoned addresses should stay abandoned without any locking mechanisms. This primarily only affects old P2PK addresses anyway, not even P2PKH where only the address hash is seen. The early Bitcoin developers had incredible foresight.
Unless this alliance has all of the top and leading companies onboard it is completely useless, a single member outside of this alliance can do whatever they want. Now tell me, why would these companies which often have nothing to do with Bitcoin, want to do this?
This can be done, but the alliance members would have to rush to do this before anyone else is able to do it. Who is willing to burn so much money and who is willing to burn so value in discovered coins? Depending on the timing of when this happens we could be speaking about $100 000 000 000 or more dollars just for 1 million coins. Most people don't even want to donate a few bucks regularly, but you want to ask some people to essentially donate more than a hundred billion USD?
There will be zero consequences for this.
There is nothing wrong with trying, and this remains a possibility. It all depends on who gets to these coins first and what their motivations are.
The whole point of the account-based system is not the technological superiority to the UTXO-based system (it is not superior at all), it is the ability to provide a foundation for doing protocol-level single-address freezes and reversals. So yes, they can do this in Ethereum and they have already done a rollback in the early days and yes most altcoins can also do this.
Any solutions that involve someone else, in this case specifically referring to the part "wouldn't be able to migrate on their own", is centralized and corrupt. Absolutely it should not be done. If some people want to do it, then they should place me as the supreme overlord of this process.
Trusting an ethical quantum alliance contradicts Bitcoins permissionless, adversarial model and would be unenforceable in practice. The Bitcoin-consistent approach is to add quantum-resistant addresses, encourage migration, and accept that abandoned coins are an unavoidable form of entropy.
Even if those forgotten Bitcoin wallets are cracked by quantum computers in the future, wouldn't that just be a new form of mining, without affecting the total supply of Bitcoin, like gold found on a sunken ship...?
https://www.techspot.com/news/109964-google-claims-quantum-breakthrough-willow-chip-runs-algorithm.html
Google claims quantum breakthrough as Willow chip runs algorithm 13,000× faster than supercomputers
"Pushing quantum computing into practical territory
Michel H. Devoret, a Yale physicist who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for research that laid the foundation for quantum computing, helped lead the experiment. He and his colleagues at Google's Quantum AI Lab in Goleta announced this week that their quantum processor, powered by a superconducting chip called Willow, successfully executed a new algorithm known as Quantum Echoes.
The results, published in Nature, showed the machine performing certain computations 13,000 times faster than the world's most powerful supercomputers."
I've seen research showing that this chip has already helped solve complex scientific problems. This chip isn't enough to crack modern encryption, but that could change in 10 years.
Wrong, it does not do no such thing. The alliance is independent of Bitcoin and has no relation to its protocol. Actually, trying to prevent others from building their own alliances on or outside the protocol would go against the ideals that Bitcoin was founded on. Ironic, isn't it?
None of this is related to the proposal, you didn't even fully read the thread before you shitposted.
It can be considered another form of mining, but unfortunately this type of mining does not bring any benefit to the Bitcoin network. I know that we would prefer it to be otherwise, but it simply doesn't do anything for us in these terms. I don't think there is much we can do with this fact without confiscating coins (to reintroduce them as real mining supply or something similar) and thereby we would destroy everything that Bitcoin stands for.
The chip didn't do anything significant, stop writing misinformation you 3rd world lowlife imbecile. These are topics that go way beyond your comprehension and intellect, and you should stay in other places where you can shitpost while hidden in the masses. Reading headlines and posting links to things of which you understand nothing is classic shitposting behavior here, you are not better than the average snake oil peddler.
Nobody knows anything or has any timelines for any of this, and whoever claims otherwise is a charlatan or an idiot. It could be 5 years away from now and it could also be 500 years away from now. The average person here is extremely dumb, that is why they buy any kind of propaganda by various entities even if it is the most basic type. Nobody who has a strong incentive for this to be delivered as soon as possible should be consulted about these matters, that should be plainly obvious even if many dumb people don't understand that. If my whole financial future is invested in building quantum computers, what would I as a biased and shady top-researcher say? That it is not going to happen within this century? Quantum peddlers are not any better than AI or shitcoin peddlers.