Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream and one of the most prominent cryptographers in the Bitcoin ecosystem, commented at Paris Blockchain Week on April 16th of this year that Bitcoin’s future post-quantum transition could inadvertently solve one of the ecosystem’s most debated mysteries: how many coins attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto are still accessible.
“This transition to a post-quantum address format allows us to know how many of those coins Satoshi still has,” he said, adding that Bitcoin’s creators Estimated to be 500,000 to 1 million BTC. The Arkham platform estimates that wallets linked to Nakamoto contain 1.09 million BTC, worth approximately USD 82 billion.
Buck’s logic is that if the migration is voluntary and owners who want to protect their funds have to move them to a new address format, the coins will remain stationary after that process. could reasonably be considered lost. If Satoshicoin does not work, it suggests that the private key no longer exists or the owner has decided to give up the private key.
Buck’s statement came two days after Jameson Ropp and five other authors published BIP-361. BIP-361 proposes restricting future movements of currencies in quantum-vulnerable forms, including Satoshi’s. As reported by CriptoNoticias, this proposal sparked rejection in some parts of the ecosystem due to the precedent that it would mean freezing user currencies.
During Blockchain Week in Paris, he found himself at the opposite end of the spectrum. He acknowledged that he is in favor of making the transition voluntary, allowing each user to independently decide whether to move their funds to a post-quantum address.
Meanwhile, Buck pointed out at the same event that the wave of Bitcoin institutionalization has not yet arrived and will take years to complete.
Most of the world’s money is managed by professional managers who handle pension funds and life insurance products. The only way most people have exposure to Bitcoin is through these institutions. That wave will pick up in the coming years.
Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream.
Adam Back and Bitcoin Quantum FUD
As reported by CriptoNoticias, Buck had already denied that any quantum threat to Bitcoin was imminent. He noted that current quantum hardware is “too basic” to represent any real risk, adding that the ecosystem has It takes “10 to 20 years” to prepare for migration.
Their April 16 statement in Paris is consistent with an orderly and voluntary migration without extreme urgency, contrary to what companies have said: Google, Grayscale, and Cloudflare set deadline for 2029 In order to move their own infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography.
The post-quantum debate in Bitcoin remains divided between those who argue that deadlines are compressing and the governance of the protocol is not ready to respond, and those, like Buck, who argue that technical work is progressing reasonably well and that urgency is disconnected from the actual state of the hardware.
(Tag Translation) Bitcoin (BTC)
