Renowned on-chain analyst Willy Woo believes Bitcoin may lag behind the rest of the crypto and tech industry in post-quantum security. Still, such a scenario may be a generational opportunity rather than a tail-end risk.
According to him, Bitcoin may miss the Q-Day deadline, estimated to be 2028-2030. Q-Day refers to the arrival of quantum tech that can break current cryptography that underpins blockchain, banking, and other digital systems’ security. Woo added,
BTC talks about a 7-year plan, but I doubt they will get it done in time. Even if they do, there are still 1.7M coins that are lost and vulnerable – those coins will be resurrected.
The 1.7M BTC refers to Satoshi (Bitcoin founder holdings) and other lost coins (forgotten passwords and seed phrases). At current market prices, this stash is worth $136 billion.
AMBCrypto previously found that for a post-quantum proof era, Bitcoin must migrate its entire stack, from mining and transfers to wallets to unbreakable post-quantum signatures.
However, if that migration is achieved, Woo believes the Satoshi and lost supply stuck in vulnerable wallets will be at risk. The attacker can flood the market with these coins, dragging BTC lower or even to ‘zero.’ But Woo made a contrarian bet that if such a scenario happens,
Anyone saying BTC goes to zero on Q-Day demonstrates they know nothing about BTC. It’ll be a buying opportunity of a lifetime taking the other side of the trade.
Bitcoin’s post-quantum plans
Critics, such as Yuvi Lightman, founder of quantum-proof Quantus Network, laughed off Woo’s projection.
Tough guy Bitcoiner thinks that cryptocurrency works even if the cryptography fails
The consensus is that if the cryptography is broken, nothing will be safe, and no one would want to buy a risky asset. Hence, the ‘BTC going to zero’ calls. The lack of consensus in most Bitcoin upgrades can further stretch the quantum timeline as Woo foresees.
In fact, it’s this likely delay that forced Coinbase to call for a dual-phased approach to the Bitcoin post-quantum migration to kick off immediately.
In the meantime, Glassnode estimates that 6.26M BTC, or 31.2% of the total supply, are vulnerable to quantum computing. The supply has exposed public keys that can be leveraged by quantum computers to reconstruct private keys and steal the assets.
Currently, there are two promising proposals, BIP-360 and SHRINCS, for the migration pathway. In fact, Coinbase backed BIP-360 as one of the ways of achieving the dual-approach.
Interestingly, the odds of BIP-360 implementation by 2026 surged to nearly 60% on October 25th.
Final Summary
- Analyst Willy Woo projected that Bitcoin’s sharp drawdown due to Q-Day fears could be a lifetime buying signal
- Odds of adopting BIP-360 this year jumped to 59%, suggesting a likely push for the dual BTC migration path.
