Willy Woo Weighs In as Quantum Hack Fears Target Satoshi’s Bitcoin Stash

• Willy Woo has responded to claims by YouTuber Josh Otten that quantum computers could potentially break Bitcoin’s encryption, allowing hackers to access Satoshi’s wallet and sending the OG crypto as low as US$3.
• Woo argued that if this were to happen, many people would step in to buy the enormous dip and the network would survive — he also pointed out many wallets wouldn’t be vulnerable to this kind of attack.
• Fears over quantum computing’s impact on Bitcoin have been growing recently as tech advances begin to accelerate.

What happens if/when someone builds a powerful quantum computer capable of hacking Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin wallet holding almost 1.1 million BTC? The issue was debated on X last week after YouTuber Josh Otten argued that such a situation could see Bitcoin’s price fall to as low as US$3 (AU$4.50).

Otten said he believes a powerful quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin’s private keys could trigger such a collapse.

“If a functional Quantum Computer is built, it could use Shor’s algorithm to crack the encryption guarding Bitcoin’s earliest wallets,” Otten claimed. 

This would expose the private keys to Satoshi Nakamoto’s fortune, likely crashing the market and destroying trust in the whole system.

Josh Otten, ‘Ordinary Things’ YouTube Channel

However, Bitcoin influencer Willy Woo doubted even this catastrophic scenario could destroy Bitcoin permanently. “Many OGs would be in to buy the flash crash,” Woo wrote.

BTC network would survive, most coins are not immediately vulnerable.

Willy Woo, Bitcoin analyst

While not all Bitcoin wallets would be vulnerable to precisely this kind of quantum computing attack, around 4 million early wallets, including Satoshi’s, would be. These early wallets, known as pay-to-public-key (P2PK), reveal the wallet’s full public key each time a payment is made. 

Using a quantum computer, a wallet’s private key could theoretically be determined from its public key. Once an attacker has a wallet’s private key, they would be able to sign transactions on the wallet and steal all the Bitcoin.

Woo said that while this scenario wouldn’t necessarily spell the end for Bitcoin, it would result in a “many year shakeout.”

More recent Bitcoin wallets aren’t as vulnerable to this kind of attack because they don’t expose their full public keys each time they send a transaction — if a quantum attacker doesn’t know a public key, they can’t determine the associated private key.

Related: Is there Meat in the Quantum-Crypto Collision?

Q-Day Imminent? Early Bitcoin Dev Not Convinced of Quantum Threat

As advances are made in quantum computing, fears are growing in the crypto community that the encryption many networks rely on could soon be broken, essentially rendering them useless. 

So-called ‘Q-Day’ — the day that quantum computers become capable of cracking current encryption algorithms — had long been considered a distant concern, but rapid progress by firms such as Rigetti and Quantinuum has some saying the time line may have shrunk to as little as just 2-3 years.

Solana’s co-founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, put the chances of Q-Day occurring in the next 5 years at 50% in comments he made earlier this year.

Related: Bitcoin Won’t Face Quantum Threat for Decades, Says Adam Back

Not everyone is convinced that quantum computers pose a huge, short-term threat to crypto. Adam Back, the early Bitcoin developer and founder of Bitcoin adjacent firm Blockstream, believes any threat posed to Bitcoin by quantum computing remains decades away.

In a comment on X from November, Back explained he thinks the threat won’t be serious for at least 20 to 40 years. He also believes the Bitcoin network will be able to be strengthened against this threat well before it poses anything like an existential risk to the network.

“There are quantum secure signatures, NIST standardized SLH-DSA last year,” Back said. “Bitcoin can add over time, as the evaluation continues and be quantum ready, long before cryptographically relevant quantum computers arrive.”

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