BlockBeats News, December 15th: Last Saturday, a fierce debate took place on social media regarding the potential impact of “Quantum Computers Potentially Hacking Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Wallet and Dumping Its Holdings.” This debate was sparked by a Bitcoin price chart shared by YouTuber Josh Otten, showing BTC plummeting to $3. He stated that if a sufficiently powerful quantum computer were to successfully steal around 1 million BTC held by Bitcoin’s anonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto and dump it on the market, this scenario could indeed happen.
Responding to this, long-time Bitcoin hodler Willy Woo stated: “Many OGs (early Bitcoin holders) will buy the dip in such a flash crash. The Bitcoin network will survive; most Bitcoins won’t immediately face a risk.” Woo further pointed out that around 4 million BTC are stored in P2PK (Pay-to-Public-Key) addresses, including Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin. These addresses directly expose the full public key when spent on-chain, making them theoretically more vulnerable to quantum attacks.
He added that once a Bitcoin wallet’s full public key is publicly revealed on-chain, it could face a future risk of quantum attacks—because, under the assumption of having enough computing power, a quantum computer theoretically could derive the private key from the public key. In contrast, newer Bitcoin address types are not as susceptible to quantum attacks since they do not expose the full public key on-chain; if the public key is unknown, a quantum computer cannot generate the corresponding private key based on it.
