Bitcoin Developer Jameson Lopp Advocates for Freezing 5.6 Million BTC to Thwart Hackers

According to Jameson Lopp, a prominent Bitcoin core developer, it would be preferable to freeze the approximately 5.6 million lost bitcoin, valued at around $420 billion, rather than risking them being seized by future quantum hackers. In an interview, Lopp expressed that, while he does not wish to freeze anyone's bitcoin, it might be safer to remove dormant tokens from circulation to protect the network. Lopp emphasized that his comments were speculative, considering a potential future threat, and that he would rather see lost or dormant coins become inaccessible to attackers than fall into the wrong hands. The comments come after the release of BIP-361, a proposal that explores phasing out Bitcoin's current cryptographic signatures and potentially freezing assets that fail to migrate. Lopp described the proposal as a 'rough idea for a contingency plan' and hopes it will never be necessary. He believes that individual economic incentives take precedence over philosophical principles in the face of an existential threat. The proposal has sparked intense debate within the community, with some arguing that freezing dormant bitcoin accounts would undermine the cryptocurrency's core principles of immutable and censorship-resistant ownership. Others, like Lopp, see it as a necessary measure to protect the network from potential threats posed by quantum computing.