Crypto news

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has proposed a radical solution to protect early-era bitcoins. His idea is to give owners of inactive coins, including Satoshi Nakamoto himself, exactly 12 months to transfer funds to secure wallets. If this does not happen, Zhao suggests freezing these assets forever to prevent them from being captured by future quantum computers.

According to Zhao's estimates, if such a scenario were implemented, only about 20 million BTC would remain in circulation. The remaining coins, especially those sitting in old wallets, would be locked up. This, in his view, is the only way to protect vulnerable digital assets before quantum computing reaches a level capable of breaking old cryptographic schemes.

Quantum threat and vulnerability of P2PK

At the center of the discussion are wallets using the Pay-To-Public-Key (P2PK) format, which fully exposes the public key. Such wallets were common in the early days of Bitcoin, including those belonging to Satoshi himself. Zhao warns that if nothing is done, these coins will effectively go to whoever can first crack them using quantum algorithms.

A similar view was previously expressed by Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer. He noted that quantum computing would simplify some operations, such as factoring numbers, but not all tasks would become easy. However, for P2PK wallets, the threat is real, and the window of opportunity for an attack may be narrow, complicating an attacker's work but not making it impossible.

My expert opinion

Zhao's idea is certainly provocative and raises an important question about Bitcoin's long-term security. However, forcibly freezing assets, especially those belonging to the cryptocurrency's creator, contradicts the very spirit of decentralization. Instead of radical measures, the community should focus on developing quantum-resistant algorithms and voluntary fund migrations. Otherwise, we risk not protecting Satoshi's legacy but violating the fundamental principles on which the entire market is built.