Is Bitcoin in danger? Here is my view.

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The potential threat of quantum computing to cryptography is indeed real. When quantum computers achieve sufficient computing power, they may be able to break the public-private key pairs based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). However, we are still quite a way from being able to break the SHA-256 and ECDSA used by Bitcoin. Although Google's Willow is a breakthrough, much more progress is needed to reach the number of qubits required to break these encryption algorithms.

/About the vulnerabilities of P2PK format

Emin's concerns are reasonable. Early Bitcoin did indeed use the P2PK format, which exposes the public key and is theoretically more susceptible to quantum computing attacks. Modern Bitcoin transactions primarily use P2PKH (Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash) and other more secure formats, which do not expose the public key until the transaction is spent.

/About the proposed solutions

Freezing Satoshi's Bitcoin or setting a deadline to freeze P2PK UTXOs is a controversial proposal:

. This requires the entire Bitcoin community to reach a consensus for a hard fork

. This may go against the core principles of Bitcoin’s decentralization and immutability

. It could create a dangerous precedent

A more practical response might be:

. Continue advancing the research and development of quantum-resistant encryption algorithms

. Prepare soft fork upgrade plans in advance for potential quantum threats

. Encourage users holding old format UTXOs to migrate to more secure address formats

$BTC