A proposal to freeze dormant bitcoin, currently valued at $76,195.79, could trigger a sudden and drastic repricing, marking one of the most turbulent trading days in the cryptocurrency's history since its launch in 2009, according to advocates. The debate surrounding the freezing of inactive tokens to protect them from potential quantum computing-based theft has been ongoing among bitcoin developers and industry participants. Samuel 'Chad' Patt, founder of Op Net, stated that freezing any coins, including those considered lost, would set a precedent that could impact the entire market, affecting the roughly 19.8 million BTC in circulation. 'Institutional risk desks do not care about the reason, they care about the precedent,' Patt said.
Market analyst Jason Fernandes, a self-described pragmatic maximalist, agreed with Patt's assessment but believes a successful quantum attack would have even more severe consequences. 'Institutions won’t just price precedent, they’ll price whether the system can survive a break in its core assumptions,' Fernandes added. The discussion revolves around the estimated 5.6 million BTC held in wallets that have been inactive for over a decade, making them vulnerable to potential quantum computing attacks.
Jameson Lopp, a core Bitcoin developer, suggested that freezing these dormant tokens would be preferable to leaving them at risk of being stolen. Lopp and other developers proposed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 361 (BIP-361), which considers phasing out bitcoin’s current cryptographic signatures and potentially freezing assets that fail to migrate.
However, some experts, including bitcoin maximalists, argue that freezing dormant coins would undermine the cryptocurrency's core principles of immutability, permissionlessness, and decentralization. They believe that such a move would require a contentious hard fork, violating the network’s ethos. Others, like Ken Kruger, founder and CEO of Moon Technologies, think that Lopp’s proposal is sensible, given the potential risks posed by quantum computing. The community remains divided, with some advocating for a more pragmatic approach to address the quantum threat, while others prioritize preserving the core principles of the bitcoin network.