Changpeng Zhao proposes freezing Satoshi's bitcoins: protection from quantum threat or violation of principles?
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has made a radical proposal: give Satoshi Nakamoto 12 months to move his bitcoins before a quantum network upgrade. If the coins are not moved, they would be frozen forever.
According to Zhao's estimates, only about 20 million coins would remain in the new protocol, as the rest would be locked. This is how he describes the consequences of the proposed freeze on inactive wallets.
Protection against the quantum threat
Zhao warns that inaction on this issue is dangerous. If nothing is done, the coins would effectively go to whoever hacks them. This will happen as soon as quantum computing reaches the required level.
This concerns wallets from the early period of Bitcoin, which are considered the most vulnerable. As quantum computers develop, traditional encryption methods could be at risk, which is what prompted Zhao's proposal.
The idea is to protect vulnerable digital assets before they become accessible to attackers. The one-year window, according to Zhao, would give the owner of inactive coins the opportunity to transfer them to a secure format.
A similar idea was proposed in 2024
A similar proposal was previously put forward by Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer. He believes that quantum computing could pose a danger to outdated technologies. Wallets from Nakamoto's active period use the Pay-To-Public-Key (P2PK) format, which fully exposes the public key.
Sirer stated that quantum computing would simplify performing certain operations, such as number factorization, while other tasks would remain equally complex. Furthermore, according to his assessment, a quantum attacker has only a small window of opportunity for an attack, which complicates their work.
Sirer noted that modern wallets and systems like Avalanche do not use P2PK, but it was used in the early days of Bitcoin. Therefore, in his opinion, when quantum computing becomes a real threat, the community should consider freezing Satoshi's coins or generally setting a deadline and freezing all coins in the P2PK format.
My analysis: The idea of freezing Satoshi's bitcoins is an attempt to preempt a potential catastrophe, but it raises fundamental questions about blockchain immutability and decentralization. If we start freezing assets based on assumptions about future threats, we risk undermining the very principle on which Bitcoin is built. However, ignoring the quantum threat is also not an option — the balance between security and philosophy will be a key challenge for the community in the coming years.