Author: Daii Source: mirror

This is not a rhetorical question, but an increasingly imminent reality proposition.

In the world of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto's 1.096 million Bitcoins have never moved, as if they were the original "faith anchor" of the system - symbolizing the purity of decentralization, and also symbolizing the retreat and non-intervention of the creator.

But now, a technical variable is pushing this pile of "holy objects" to the forefront.

It's not because it will be used, but because it is almost "destined" to be cracked - except that it is not hackers who do it, but quantum computers.

After my article "Bitcoin's Biggest Bomb Has Not Exploded Yet - But This May Be Your Biggest Opportunity" was published on Zhihu, everyone has reached a consensus on this:

This bomb is no longer a question of "whether it will explode", but a question of "when it will explode".

Thus, a more sensitive and controversial issue has been pushed into the spotlight:

In the face of quantum threats, should we deal with Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin?

• Moving may avoid disaster;

• Not moving may preserve faith.

This debate did not tear open the code itself, but the philosophical wound in the deepest part of the decentralized world:

When protecting faith itself will hurt the real foundation of faith - how should we choose?

Before exploring such a profound issue, let's review: How did decentralization become a belief?

1. Decentralization, a belief?

"Decentralization" is not a new term, but in the context of Bitcoin, it has long surpassed the technical architecture and has gradually been regarded as a non-negotiable belief.

To understand the power of this belief, we must first understand its "opposite" - the deep structure of the centralized world.

In the traditional financial system, banks, clearing houses, central banks and other institutions monopolize the final right to interpret the ledger. Whether an account is frozen, whether a transaction is valid, whether a person is "trustworthy" is never decided by you, but by the "power structure" behind the system.

This structure appears to be an order on the surface, but in fact it is a conditional granting of property rights: what you have is not your "rights", but the "qualification" they allow you to use temporarily.

The birth of Bitcoin is a radical attempt to dismantle this system from the source.

In Bitcoin:

• You don’t need to apply, you don’t need authorization, you don’t need identity;

• Anyone can initiate a transaction, and any node can verify its legitimacy;

• The ledger is driven by the proof-of-work mechanism, and once written, the history cannot be tampered with;

• There is no "administrator", no "backdoor", no "exceptions".

Decentralization, here, does not mean "many people maintain together", but that no one has the privilege to maintain it.

This structure gave birth to the three core principles of Bitcoin: ... center">

• This structure gives birth to the three core principles of Bitcoin:

These three principles are not moral declarations written in white papers for people to circulate. They are encoded into the protocol, verified in operation, believed in as consensus, and finally sublimated into a spiritual beacon to resist power intervention.

So for many Bitcoin believers, decentralization is no longer a certain engineering mechanism, but a belief worth exchanging for volatility, giving up convenience for freedom, and even willing to risk life and death to protect.

They believe:

A set of ledgers that are not controlled by anyone is more trustworthy than a compromised world that everyone can make sense of.

But this is exactly the problem.

Because once you admit that "some exceptions exist", such as freezing a high-risk address, modifying a historical record, and complying with a regulatory requirement, the sanctity of Bitcoin changes from an "absolute rule" to a "consensus negotiation".

In other words, decentralization is no longer a belief, but just a "strategy".

And the arrival of quantum computers is the first real test of this belief system.

It is not challenging technology, but challenging people's hearts: When the system is really facing life and death, are you willing to choose not to intervene?

This is no longer about how nodes are synchronized, but about whether humans can still stick to the "untouchable" bottom line in a crisis.

2. Quantum computers trigger a crisis of faith?

The faith in Bitcoin is not as abstract as the word "consensus". Its security is rooted in one of the most solid cornerstones in the real world - cryptography.

Bitcoin uses the elliptic curve encryption algorithm (ECDSA). The security foundation of the algorithm is the "elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem", that is:

It is almost impossible to derive the private key when the public key is known - at least, this is true on a classical computer.

However, quantum computing has changed the game.

In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor proposed a quantum algorithm (Shor's algorithm) that can efficiently solve large number decomposition and discrete logarithm problems on quantum computers. This means that once the number and stability of quantum bits (qubits) reach a threshold, the existing ECDSA security mechanism will be completely disintegrated.

According to a joint team of MIT and Google, cracking a 256-bit Bitcoin address theoretically requires about 2330 stable logical quantum bits and millions of gate operations.

A private key that takes hundreds of millions of years for a traditional computer to exhaust can theoretically be cracked by a quantum computer in a few hours or even minutes.

This is not alarmist. As early as 2019, Google announced the achievement of "quantum supremacy" - a 53-qubit quantum computer completed a task that would take a supercomputer tens of thousands of years to process. IBM, Intel, and Alibaba are also competing on this quantum track. Conservative forecasts suggest that quantum computers with thousands of qubits will be available before 2040.

By then, all systems in the crypto world that rely on existing asymmetric encryption algorithms - including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even the entire Internet's HTTPS encryption protocol - will face the risk of large-scale failure.

This is no longer a question of "technological update", but a challenge to an entire set of orders.

By the end of 2024:

• IBM announced that its latest quantum chip Condor has reached 1121 quantum bits. Although it is not fully fault-tolerant, it is close to the thousand-bit threshold.

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the United States urgently promoted the standard selection plan for "post-quantum cryptographic algorithms", and clearly pointed out that ECDSA will face "foreseeable risks" in the next decade.

Against such background, the risks faced by Bitcoin have officially entered the "strategic defense stage" from the distant "theoretical threat".

The most vulnerable and sensitive part of the system is the batch of early Bitcoins that have never been moved - that is, the address of the well-known  Patoshi block .

The so-called Patoshi blocks refer to a series of blocks suspected to be mined by Satoshi Nakamoto himself in the early days of Bitcoin, which were identified by blockchain analysis experts based on mining behavior patterns.

The characteristics of these blocks include: fixed time intervals, highly consistent Nonce distribution, and a unique "ExtraNonce" growth law. Based on these on-chain traces, researchers speculate that the miner accounts that control these blocks are very likely to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

A total of about 1.096 million bitcoins were mined in the Patoshi block. They have never been moved since their creation, and there is no record of their spending, making them the most mysterious and sensitive "silent assets" in the Bitcoin world. Their security status is directly related to the symbol of Bitcoin belief and the potential vulnerabilities of the system.

Compared with the quantum-resistant code upgrade achieved through soft and hard forks, these 1.096 million Satoshi bitcoins are the real fuse that may cause the community to split.

3. How to deal with Satoshi Bitcoin will cause a conflict of values?

So why are these Satoshi Bitcoins so dangerous?

Because they use a very early Pay-to-PubKey (P2PK) script format, and their public keys have long been exposed in plain text on the chain. This means:

• The attacker can crack the private key through the public key and directly transfer the assets.

• This attack method is exactly what quantum computing is best at.

According to the on-chain tracking data, this batch of addresses holds a total of about 1.096 million BTC. If these assets are breached and sold, the market will face an impact of more than 120 billion US dollars, and the consequences will be disastrous.

Therefore, the discussion on whether to "pre-process" this batch of Satoshi Bitcoins is gradually changing from a marginal topic to a realistic proposition that must be faced. A big discussion around "Should Satoshi Bitcoin be processed" is heating up in the community, and there are currently three main voices:

3.1 The first voice: "Do not touch" - Bitcoin's ledger must not be touched

This is the oldest and most authentic voice in the Bitcoin community. They advocate that even if the coins are really stolen, the market crashes, and confidence is shaken, the precedent of "human intervention in the ledger" must not be set.

Why? Because once you touch it once, you will do it a second time and a third time. This is no longer a single event, but the beginning of a "permission" - who defines what is "reasonable intervention"? Is it the Core developers? Is it the miners? Is it a country or a court?

As Bitcoin Core developer Matt Corallo has publicly stated many times:

As long as you move the ledger once, it is no longer Bitcoin.

They believe that the meaning of decentralization is that even if the system is about to explode, someone cannot be allowed to press the pause button.

This is a persistence of "letting faith outweigh risk". But the problem lies here too - if this is not a kind of politically correct self-hypnosis, it must be mentally prepared to "watch Bitcoin being looted by hackers".

3.2 The second voice: "Move, but must be limited and extremely cautious"

This group does not act easily, but they do not think that "not moving" is sacred. What they emphasize is realism: "If we can prevent an impending nuclear-style sell-off through consensus, why not do it?" The specific plans they propose often include the following elements: A locking mechanism is implemented through a soft fork, such as setting spendability limits only for certain specific P2PK addresses; The freeze is not permanent, but delayed activation: For example, a 10-year cooling-off period is set, during which coin holders can "prove themselves" through post-quantum signatures to redeem; The whole community consensus voting mechanism: It is not decided by a certain team, but by miners, nodes, developers and users who collectively participate in decision-making. This path sounds more rational and has precedents to follow.

For example, BIP-119 (OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY) is a proposal tool that can be used to implement complex lock script structures. Although originally designed for batch payments and fee optimization, some developers have proposed that it can be used to limit the spending permissions of specific UTXOs, thereby "freezing" certain addresses.

They emphasized that this is not a "centralized intervention", but a technical "system self-defense mechanism" on which the community has reached broad consensus.

But the problem is: even if the consensus is high, once the ledger can be changed, trust is not "automatic" but "negotiated".

3.3 The third voice: "Don't freeze, don't change, don't negotiate - let it die naturally"

There is also a group that advocates: "We don't have to do anything."

This is not giving up, but a kind of technological calmness. They believe: Instead of creating ethical troubles, it is better to guide users to migrate to quantum secure addresses through protocol upgrades, so that these high-risk old addresses will be "naturally inactivated".

How to do it?

• Encourage users to migrate assets from old addresses to P2TR (Taproot) that supports post-quantum signatures or future XMSS/LMS addresses;

• Use economic incentives (such as fee discounts) to induce "security upgrades" on the chain;

• Do not freeze any addresses at the system level, but do not recognize the control of non-post-quantum signatures over certain key paths.

The advantage of this method is that it does not hurt consensus, move the ledger, or cause controversy, but the cost is extremely slow, and it has no effect on Satoshi Nakamoto's batch of "naked coins" - because no one can "migrate" these coins at all.

In other words, this solution is responsible for the future, but it is powerless against "that bomb."

3.4 Summary

At present, no solution can completely avoid disputes. Each path is a value ranking: do you care more about unchanging rules, or do you care more about real safety?

Some people say that Bitcoin is a temple, and the statue should not be moved out just because it is dangerous; others say that Bitcoin is a ship, and if you know there are explosives under the ship, you should deal with it immediately.

But this time, it is no longer a problem that can be solved automatically by code. It is a test of the collective will of the community, an ultimate vote on "power and principles".

And its real question is:

Are we really ready to face the future of Bitcoin not "cannot be moved", but "can be moved but choose not to move"?

Obviously, this is another conflict of values.

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4. Values are not negotiable?

Every time Bitcoin faces a crisis, it appears to be a technical disagreement over code, parameters or addresses, but in essence, it almost points to the same deep-seated problem:

Can we still unify the definition of "what is Bitcoin" in our hearts?

This time is no exception.

You think the community is arguing about whether to freeze Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoins and whether to intervene to prevent theft. In fact, what everyone is arguing about is something that is more difficult to unify - the priority of value sorting.

And this is not the first time that Bitcoin has encountered such a "faith rift".

Back in 2017, Bitcoin was caught in a civil war over the issue of "capacity expansion".

One faction advocates sticking to the 1MB block limit and emphasizing decentralization and node operability;

The other faction advocates increasing the block size and TPS to make Bitcoin more like a "global payment network".

The debate ended with a hard fork, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was born. The direction of history is also very clear: BTC adheres to the bottom line of "simple ledger" and is still the crypto asset with the highest market value in the world; although BCH has not sunk, it is always outside the mainstream narrative.

What does this mean?

Bitcoin's technology can be upgraded, and the route can be debated, but the consensus cannot be easily torn apart. Once torn apart, its cost is not "changing a chain to use", but the reconstruction of the entire belief system.

Compared to the "block dispute" in 2017, the current disagreement over "whether to intervene in Satoshi Nakamoto's address" will only be more intense.

• The dispute was about "transaction efficiency" that time, and this time it is about "whether the ledger can be rewritten";

• The disagreement was about "application positioning" that time, and this time it is about "the boundary of decentralized governance";

• The dispute was about "how to make a better Bitcoin", and this time it is about "what can still be called Bitcoin".

Some voices supporting active intervention believe that it is time to give Bitcoin a certain degree of "governance flexibility" like Ethereum, and it can no longer be a "bystander-style system". But opponents’ questions are equally sharp: “If we also start to modify history, freeze addresses, and filter transactions, then what is the essential difference between us and Ethereum?” This is not an emotional accusation, but a wake-up call.

Once you open a loophole for "special circumstances", the logical dam will begin to collapse:

• You can freeze Satoshi coins;

• You may also freeze addresses sanctioned by the United States (such as Tornado Cash);

• Then you may cooperate with regulators to set up a certain "transaction whitelist" mechanism...

Going down this path is exactly the path that Bitcoin has refused to take for fourteen years.

And if this disagreement on "whether to do it" cannot reach an overwhelming consensus, the final outcome is likely to be - another hard fork.

Don't misunderstand, although the Bitcoin protocol is strong, it is not "indivisible".

Any person, organization, or mining pool can create "another Bitcoin" as long as they are willing to fork the source code, modify the rules, and start a new blockchain.

In the past decade, such attempts have been everywhere, from Bitcoin XT to Bitcoin Gold, and then to Bitcoin SV, most of which eventually sank silently.

But if the core of this split is not technical parameters, but the understanding of the "boundary of governance rights", then this forked chain is likely to be more than a temporary "test chain", but the beginning of another "new consensus".

By then, BTC may still be BTC, but it will no longer be the "digital gold" that everyone can reach a minimum consensus on.

It may become two Bitcoins:

• One guards the "pure ledger" and refuses to use authority even if it is passively bombed;

• The other advocates "rational intervention" and is willing to modify history to a limited extent for the sake of system security.

And you, as a member of this system, will eventually have to choose:

Do you believe in "rules first"? Or "flexible survival"?

Conclusion

The quantum threat has pushed Satoshi Nakamoto's 1.096 million bitcoins into the spotlight, but this does not mean a "countdown to doomsday." Even if they are eventually cracked, the most direct consequence is only a sudden supply shock-prices may fluctuate violently, but not enough to destroy the entire system.

Bitcoin has already experienced the collapse of Mt.Gox, the liquidation of 3AC, and the disaster of FTX. Every moment that seems to be a "waterfall" is eventually absorbed by the market, bottomed out, and reconstructed to a new high. The newly added chips will eventually fall into the hands of long-term believers, and the on-chain fees and computing power will be repriced in the violent fluctuations.

The quantum storm may set off huge waves, but what really steers the voyage is the resilience and direction of consensus.

Quantum impact is not the end, but a magnifying glass.

It amplifies panic and confidence; it amplifies the fragility of technology and collective wisdom.

In the end, Bitcoin will tell the world with actual combat:

Faith is not fragile, but it needs crisis after crisis to prove that it is worth being protected.