Cypherpunk Jameson Lopp and five co-authors have published a draft BIP-361 on GitHub, proposing to freeze quantum-vulnerable Bitcoin coins, including Satoshi's roughly $74 billion stash. If adopted, coins in old-format P2PK addresses would become inaccessible five years after activation.
Three phases over five years
The plan has three stages. Year three after activation: a ban on sending new BTC to old-format addresses. Year five: signatures on those addresses become invalid and the coins get frozen. There is an escape hatch, though. Phase three offers a recovery path through zero-knowledge proofs - anyone who kept their seed phrase can reclaim frozen funds even after the deadline.
About 34% of Bitcoin's circulating supply sits in vulnerable formats today. That includes roughly 1 million BTC from Satoshi Nakamoto. The authors called this a "private incentive to upgrade": frozen coins slightly raise the value of everyone else's holdings, while coins stolen by a quantum computer would do the opposite.
Why P2PK addresses are at risk
P2PK addresses expose the public key directly in the blockchain. A sufficiently advanced quantum computer could derive the private key from it and drain the coins without the owner's knowledge. BIP-360 plugged this gap for new transactions. BIP-361 aims to plug it for the 1.7 million BTC that have sat untouched for years.
Lopp was measured about expectations. BIP-361 "is not currently in a position to be adopted" - his words. He described it as "a rough sketch of one way we could approach the issue," and expects it to evolve over years as quantum research advances.
Community backlash
Protocol developer Mark Erhardt shared BIP-361 on X and walked into a wall of criticism. The proposal was called "highly authoritarian and confiscatory." Bitcoin Magazine editor Brian Trollz rejected it outright. TFTC founder Marty Bent called it "laughable." Phil Geiger of Metaplanet put it bluntly: "We have to steal people's money to prevent their money from being stolen."
The backlash hits a real nerve. Forced address freezes cut against Bitcoin's core principle: no one controls another person's coins. Even with the best intentions behind it.
Where this goes next
BIP-361 is a draft. Any Bitcoin protocol change needs broad consensus from miners, node operators, and developers. That takes years. But quantum computing is moving faster, and the question of 1.7 million vulnerable BTC is not going away. BIP-361 has started a conversation that will shape network security for the next decade.
Comments
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *