CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju warned on X that roughly 6.89 million BTC are currently vulnerable to quantum attacks. That figure includes an estimated 1 million BTC linked to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
According to Ki Young Ju, 1.91 million BTC sit in old P2PK addresses where public keys are permanently visible on the blockchain. Another 4.98 million BTC may have had their public keys exposed through past transactions. Once a public key is visible on-chain, the risk does not go away.
“Coins that appear perfectly safe today could become spendable by an attacker tomorrow,” he said.
Ki Young Ju noted that about 3.4 million BTC has not moved in over 10 years. Around 1 million of that is tied to Satoshi. At current prices, that is hundreds of billions of dollars sitting in addresses that quantum computers could eventually crack.
He framed the situation as binary. Either Bitcoin upgrades its protocol and freezes these coins, or quantum attackers eventually drain them. Anyone using old address types faces the same outcome: coins frozen by design or stolen by force.
This is where Ki Young Ju’s argument gets interesting. He said developers can build quantum-resistant solutions.
The problem is getting the Bitcoin community to actually agree on freezing coins, something that goes against Bitcoin’s core principle of immutability.
He pointed to past disputes as evidence. The block size debate lasted over three years and caused hard forks. SegWit2x failed to get enough community support. Freezing dormant coins would face similar, if not stronger, pushback.
“Technical fixes move fast. Social consensus does not,” he said. “Developers are not the bottleneck. Social consensus is.”
Ki Young Ju ended with a direct question to the community: Would you support freezing dormant coins, including Satoshi’s, to protect Bitcoin from quantum attacks? Or does that go against everything Bitcoin stands for?
If that question alone already divides the community, he said, the quantum debate needs to start now.
According to recent analysis, approximately 6.89 million BTC are potentially vulnerable, including an estimated 1 million BTC linked to Satoshi Nakamoto.
While developers can create quantum-resistant solutions, freezing coins requires social consensus. The community would need to agree on this controversial move, which challenges Bitcoin’s immutability principle.
Yes. Developers can implement quantum-resistant cryptography, but changes require broad community consensus and may involve complex protocol updates.
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