Adam Back, the British cryptographer who was identified last week by the New York Times as the most likely creator of Bitcoin, has called on developers to begin building optional protections against future quantum computer attacks rather than forcing users to move their holdings or risk having them frozen.
Back, who has repeatedly denied being Satoshi, made the remarks at Paris Blockchain Week, where he described current quantum computers as essentially laboratory experiments and said progress in the field has been incremental over the 25 years he has tracked it.
Back, who is chief executive of Blockstream, a Bitcoin infrastructure company, says his preferred approach is to develop optional upgrade paths that allow users to move to quantum-resistant security at their own pace.
He argues that Bitcoin's developer community has a strong track record of coordinating rapidly when genuine emergencies arise.
His position puts him at odds with a group of six developers led by Jameson Lopp, who have drafted a formal proposal known as BIP-361 that would phase out addresses vulnerable to quantum attack over five years.
The proposal, titled "Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset," was updated in Bitcoin's official code repository this week and would ultimately freeze any coins that fail to migrate, including those from the Satoshi era.
The urgency behind the proposal stems from recent research by Google's quantum computing division and the California Institute of Technology, which suggests that a quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin's encryption could arrive within years rather than decades.
The researchers estimate that fewer than 1,200 logical processing units, known as qubits, could be sufficient, and that a machine with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits might crack Bitcoin's security in minutes.
An estimated 6.9 million Bitcoin are considered vulnerable, including roughly 1.7 million coins from Bitcoin's earliest days.
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Not everyone favours either approach.
BitMEX Research has proposed a middle path: a fund of deliberately exposed coins that would act as an early warning system, triggering a broader freeze only if a quantum attacker successfully moved them.
The recap
- Adam Back advocates optional quantum-resistant upgrades to Bitcoin.
- Proposal would freeze nonmigrated coins over five years.
- An estimated 6.9 million BTC face quantum vulnerability.