Sztorc forks Bitcoin to seize Satoshi's coins for quantum defense
- Paul Sztorc's eCash hard fork will seize half of Satoshi's 1.1 million dormant coins to fund development.
- BIP 361 proposes a three-phase soft fork to freeze quantum-vulnerable wallets, threatening 34% of the supply.
- Experts debate whether quantum computing will cause theft or shift mining incentives toward attack.
The debate over Bitcoin's quantum threat has moved from theory to concrete protocol forks. Developer Paul Sztorc is launching a hard fork called eCash, which will reassign 50% of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 million unmoved coins to fund the project. He argues this radical step is necessary to bootstrap a network with built-in scalability via his BIP 300 drivechains and a sustainable security model. Sztorc's plan for Satoshi's coins predates but coincides with a separate proposal to freeze them.
That competing proposal, BIP 361, would force a migration away from all wallets with exposed public keys. Co-authored by Jameson Lopp, the soft fork would first stop new deposits to vulnerable addresses and, after a two-year grace period, invalidate spending from them entirely. The stakes are high - 34% of all Bitcoin, including Satoshi's fortune, sits in these quantum-vulnerable addresses.
“Ben Carman argues the network should freeze 'quantum-vulnerable' coins - those with revealed public keys, including Satoshi’s - before hardware catches up to the math.”
- Stacker News Live
On Stacker News Live, Keon explained that a quantum breakthrough could let Shor's algorithm break the public keys of about 20% of Bitcoin's supply. Jimmy Song countered that predicting the timing is difficult and that miners have an incentive to preserve Bitcoin's long-term value, making destructive attacks less appealing. Ben Carman warned the real risk is a shift in mining incentives, where miners could partner with quantum labs to reorg the chain for the loot.
“David Bennett dismisses the achievement as a marketing gimmick funded by Castle Island Ventures.”
- David Bennett, Bitcoin And | Bitcoin & Economic News
Some see the quantum alarmism as a strategic push. On Bitcoin And, analyst David Bennett dismissed a recent demonstration of breaking a 15-bit key as a marketing gimmick, arguing the gap to Bitcoin's 256-bit security is astronomical. He suggested backers like Nick Carter might be using quantum fears to steer users toward Ethereum-aligned, post-quantum solutions. While academic roadmaps suggest relevant quantum computers could emerge by 2027-2030, the community is divided between preemptive defense and unwavering immutability.
Sztorc’s eCash, launching in late August, forces a choice. It replays Bitcoin's transaction history, offering a 1:1 claim to holders, but seizes Satoshi's coins to fund what he calls a “sustainable fix.” He believes Bitcoin has stagnated, citing low user adoption and miners shifting to AI data centers. His fork is a direct challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy, turning a theoretical security debate into a live experiment in blockchain governance.