According to advocates, freezing dormant bitcoin, currently valued at $78,114.42, would have severe consequences, triggering an immediate repricing and potentially marking one of the worst trading days for the cryptocurrency since its launch in 2009. The debate surrounding the freezing of dormant tokens to protect against the risk of theft through quantum computing has been ongoing among bitcoin developers and industry participants. Samuel 'Chad' Patt, founder of Op Net, stated that freezing any coins, including 'lost' ones, would set a precedent, telling the market that all 19.8 million BTC in circulation are conditionally owned, which could lead to institutional risk desks reevaluating their investments.
Market analyst Jason Fernandes, a self-described pragmatic maximalist, agrees that a successful quantum attack would trigger a more severe repricing, with institutions pricing in the system's ability to survive a break in its core assumptions. Mati Greenspan, a maximalist and market analyst, believes that if quantum computers crack early Bitcoin wallets, it would trigger the largest bug bounty in human history rather than a rollback or freeze.
The estimated 5.6 million BTC held in dormant wallets for over a decade are the most vulnerable to quantum computing attacks. Core Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp suggests freezing these assets to prevent them from being stolen, while others propose phasing out bitcoin's current cryptographic signatures, potentially freezing assets that fail to migrate. The proposal, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 361 (BIP-361), has sparked debate, with some arguing that it would undermine Bitcoin's core principles of immutability, permissionlessness, and no central enforcement.
Kent Halliburton, CEO and co-founder at SazMining, believes that the intentions behind BIP-361 are good but that defending Bitcoin by breaking its core promise of inviolable property rights is not the solution. Khushboo Khullar, venture partner at Lightning Ventures, says that freezing dormant coins is a deeply flawed approach that would require a contentious hard fork, violating the network's decentralized ethos. However, not all maximalists agree, with some believing that Lopp's proposal is sensible and that tradeoffs are necessary to address the quantum threat. Ken Kruger, founder and CEO of Moon Technologies, notes that building systems that are truly future-proof is challenging and that quantum may pose a threat that requires compromise.
Fernandes understands the concerns about precedent but believes that the risk of inaction far outweighs any concern about philosophical purity, and that bitcoin could evolve to address the quantum risk as it has in the past with upgrades like SegWit and Taproot. Ultimately, the majority of bitcoin holders are more interested in preserving capital than preserving a notion about what bitcoin is 'supposed to be.'