Bitcoin Developer Jameson Lopp Advocates Freezing 5.6 Million BTC to Prevent Hacker Exploitation

A prominent Bitcoin core developer has expressed a preference for freezing approximately 5.6 million lost or dormant bitcoin, valued at around $420 billion, rather than risking their potential exploitation by future quantum hackers. Jameson Lopp emphasized that, although he does not support freezing anyone's bitcoin, removing dormant tokens from circulation might be a safer option for the network. Lopp's comments follow the release of BIP-361, a proposal exploring the phase-out of Bitcoin's current cryptographic signatures and the potential invalidation of transactions from quantum-vulnerable wallets. The proposal has sparked intense debate within the community, with some arguing that freezing dormant assets could protect market confidence and others claiming it would undermine Bitcoin's core principles of immutable and censorship-resistant ownership.