Emin Gün Sirer, founder of Ava Labs, warns that 1 million Bitcoins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto may face threats from quantum technology.
Reason:
👉 This early Bitcoin is stored in a very old format called Pay-To-Public-Key (P2PK).
👉 P2PK differs from the current standard (Pay-To-Public-Key-Hash - P2PKH), as it publicly reveals the Public Key as soon as the transaction is created. This allows hackers to use sufficiently powerful attack tools, such as future quantum computers, to deduce the Private Key and seize this Bitcoin.
⚠️ Note: Modern Bitcoin wallets no longer use P2PK. Instead, they use higher security standards such as Pay-To-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH), which only reveals the public key when necessary.
However, the Bitcoins mined early, like those of Satoshi, still use the P2PK format, making them more vulnerable to quantum threats.
Emin Gün Sirer suggests two solutions to protect this Bitcoin:
👉 The Bitcoin community may agree to freeze Bitcoins related to P2PK addresses to prevent them from being used or transacted.
👉 Set a specific timeline to freeze all UTXOs using the P2PK format.
The above viewpoint has also received many conflicting opinions, especially that Satoshi's solution to freeze BTC goes against the philosophy of decentralization and Bitcoin ownership.$BTC