Numerous Bitcoiners chimed in on the quantum computing debate this week, marking a turning point in overall discourse. Michael Saylor referred to network “upgrades” and “freezing old coins,” while Nic Carter recently dropped a 2-part essay on “the quantum problem.”
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Quantum just got shoved into the middle of the Overton Window.
It had been bubbling for quite some time, recently revived with BIP-360 in December 2024, but as the discussion started ramping up in November, it feels like this week marked the true breakout moment.
Getting out ahead of it: I am undecided on if quantum is a near term risk and I do not have strong opinions at this time about what the response should be.
I do know that it’s an extremely complex topic and there are very few experts and far more charlatans.
That said, let me outline the important sequence of questions as I see them:
- Is quantum a near term risk and should we quantum proof bitcoin?
- If yes, how do we quantum-proof bitcoin?
- How should the network and users migrate to quantum security?
- What do we do about old/lost/Satoshi’s coins?
Each of these questions is sure to be a massive debate, and each one has numerous sub-questions.
Even just the question of how we quantum-proof bitcoin could challenge some long time Bitcoin convictions.
For example, most quantum-proof signature schemes are very big and would take up much more space in a Bitcoin block, which is finite. If we have a significant increase in signature size then we may find the bitcoin block size becomes a prohibitive constraint.
Therefore, it may be popular to increase bitcoin’s block size – or more accurately discount certain bytes more.
Now you can see why the quantum debate could get quite hairy – a lot of Bitcoiners are deeply opposed to any blocksize increase whatsoever. We fought a war over this after all!
I, for one, welcome our new quantum discourse overlords. It’s way more fun (and productive) arguing about quantum than filters.
Header image by Steve Jurveston.
