According to Strategy founder Michael Saylor, quantum computing won’t break the Bitcoin network. Instead, the blockchain will simply “upgrade” in a hard fork.
This backwards-incompatible “upgrade,” he posted to X, will freeze quantum-vulnerable pay to public key (P2PK) outputs and offer additional bonuses of a reduced supply of bitcoin (BTC), higher security, and a stronger network.
It would prevent Satoshi Nakamoto from spending his coins, and force a migration of nodes and miners to backwards-incompatible software.
“Looks like Saylor supports freezing Satoshi’s coins if quantum computers materialize,” someone commented. “Lost coins do not stay frozen, they get stolen,” clarified another.
“It’s so easy to call for freezing property when the property is not yours,” wrote another, while one developer claimed, “Every single thing you mentioned here is extremely complex with colossal risk and externalities.”
The threat of quantum computers forging BTC signatures is real, albeit years if not decades in the future.
Once large, fault‑tolerant machines running Shor’s algorithm break an ECDSA logarithmic problem, that quantum computer could derive the private key from certain P2PK public keys.
These include unspent transaction outputs belonging to Satoshi and Hal Finney from the earliest days of the Bitcoin ledger.
From then on, that private key may sign any transaction and spend all of the BTC in its wallet.
