Can Quantum Computing Threaten Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1 Million Bitcoins?

Concerns over the safety of Bitcoin's early transaction formats have reignited over the fate of Satoshi Nakamoto's 1 million BTC as advances in quantum computing threaten the cryptocurrency.

Should Bitcoin (BTC) Creator Freeze 1 Million Coins To Prevent Exploitation? As the development of quantum computing accelerates, this question is on the minds of some in the crypto community.

The threat stems from a pay-to-public-key (P2PK) vulnerability in Bitcoin's early transaction format, which exposes public keys on the blockchain.

Unlike modern payment-to-public-key-hash (P2PKH) results, early P2PK transactions could be exploited by quantum computers that can derive private keys from public keys, said Emir Sir, co-founder and CEO of Ava Labs.

While some see the freezing of satoshi coins as a necessary precaution, others argue that it undermines BTC's principles of decentralization and immutability. In any case, Satoshi's 1 million BTC provides a high-value target for quantum attackers that could revolutionize the market.

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Are the coins at risk?

Satoshi's BTC lives on in the legacy of P2PK, as the transaction format exposes the owner's public key, which is no longer used.

Since the introduction of P2PKH, a format that hides the public key behind a hash until the coins are mined, using quantum computing for hacking has become more complex than attacking an unprotected public key.

The vulnerability of P2PK effects to quantum risks is not yet a problem. Still, it may be in the future as advances are made in quantum computing and quantum attacks become a viable option for hackers.

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Freezing Satoshi 1 million BTC

The ability to bind satoshi holdings involves changing the rules of the BTC consensus to spend unique costless transaction outcomes (UTXOs).

This process requires developers to prepare a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP), clearly identify the vulnerable P2PK results with Satoshi, and approve it to enforce the shutdown.

If approved, the freezing operation could be done via a soft fork, which is optional for nodes but driven by consensus, or a hard fork, which replaces BTC's blockchain code entirely.

While this is technically possible, freezing Satoshi-related coins requires broad community consensus, which has historically been a challenge for BTC.

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Implications of Satoshi's holdings freeze

Freezing Satoshi's holdings raises a critical question that challenges the fundamental ethics behind the creation of cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin is designed to be an immutable ledger where no entity changes the history of the network, but if the holdings are locked in a fork, this principle is contradicted – opening the door to future interventions and the failure of the Bitcoin blockchain's decentralization.

Proponents argue that satoshi coins are a special case and can be considered unique due to their public key vulnerability and potential implications for the broader crypto market.

With advances in quantum computing – and the possibility of a quantum attack on the 1 million BTC motherlode – could such an event prompt Satoshi to reveal himself?

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