[ExI] Sell your Bitcoins!

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, May 17, 2026, 7:39 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sat, May 16, 2026 at 9:31 PM Kelly Anderson via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> Selling bitcoin now only puts your money in banks, stock accounts,
>> or something else that quantum computing can break apart just as easily.*
>>
>
> *Banks and companies have a central authority to organize a transition,
> very recently Google advanced the time when it would replace everything
> with a quantum resistant algorithm from 2035 to 2029, it's a big job but
> they will probably be successful. However bitcoin has no central authority
> so I don't see how it can make a transition from elliptic curve encryption
> to something more quantum resistant without it turning into a chaotic mess.*
>

It's made numerous upgrades for far lesser reasons.


> *> You are aware that Bitcoin can and will change its codebase using its
>> own quantum algorithms if necessary to protect itself.*
>
>
> *I asked Claude about that, this is his response:  *
>
> *Claude:* "It gets messy. Bitcoin changes through a process called BIP
> (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal), which requires rough consensus among
> developers, miners, node operators, and users. This has historically been
> *extremely* contentious — the block size wars of 2017 resulted in a chain
> split (Bitcoin Cash) over *a much simpler technical change*. A
> cryptographic migration would be *orders of magnitude more complex*. The
> challenges:
>


The block size change was indeed simple technically, but the difference was
philosophical: "what kind of vision did Bitcoin want to fulfill and
become?" This philosophical view can't be argued on technical grounds which
is why it was difficult to get broad agreement, and why it led to a fork.

Being and remaining a secure cryptocurrency is something everyone agrees
with, and choosing the best algorithm to migrate to has an obvious
technical answer.


>    - *No one can be forced to upgrade.* Coins sitting in old-format
>    addresses (especially "pay to public key" outputs, which directly expose
>    the public key) would remain vulnerable even after a new standard is
>    deployed.
>
> This vulnerability primarily applies to coins mined before 2010. Since
then, public keys are hidden in chain behind a hash, which quantum
computers can't break. If they haven't moved in the ~20 years and the owner
doesn't care to move them to a quantum secure address before quantum
attacks are possible then they might as well be considered abandoned at
that point in time.





>    - *Lost keys are a wild card.* Satoshi's coins, long-dormant wallets,
>    and lost funds sit in addresses that nobody can migrate. What do you do
>    with them? Let them remain vulnerable? Freeze them? Either answer is
>    politically explosive.
>
>
Whomever has a quantum computer at that time large enough to break these
keys will likely be known (a large university or government) and might then
operate in public interest (migrating the keys on behalf of the owner to
allow them to make a claim), burn them, or donate to charity or keep them
in the federal crypto reserve. I think it's unlikely that hackers will be
the first people in the world to operate a large scale quantum computer. To
me this is little different from how the government today will take your
funds from any dormant bank account and force you to jump through hoops to
get it back. This indeed happened to me recently.



>    - *The UTXO migration problem.* Every unspent output needs to
>    transition to a quantum-resistant format. That requires every single holder
>    to actively move their coins. Historically, a meaningful fraction of
>    Bitcoin simply never moves.
>    - *Which algorithm?* Post-quantum cryptography is still maturing. NIST
>    only finalized its first PQC standards in 2024. Candidates like
>    CRYSTALS-Dilithium (lattice-based) look promising but have larger signature
>    sizes, which would affect Bitcoin's block space economics. Picking the
>    wrong one and having to migrate *again* would be catastrophic.
>
>
The one with the smallest (signature+public key) size is best for
minimizing the size of the chain. Beyond that there's not much of a
question technically. Lattice based cryptography has a long history and
it's security is fairly well vetted.



>    -
>
> The most dangerous scenario isn't a gradual migration — it's a situation
> where the quantum threat materializes faster than expected, the community
> is still deadlocked on which PQC standard to adopt, and adversaries begin
> quietly harvesting exposed public keys before anyone acts."
>

An unlikely scenario given my comment above about who the first owners of a
large scale QC are likely to be.


> *> what doesn't make sense is that billions of dollars aren't going to
>> defend themselves. They will.*
>
>
> *The simplest and surest way for someone to preserve the value of their
> bitcoins would be to sell them before the quantum shit hits the fan, that
> is to say convert the bitcoins into Dollars or Euros or Pounds, or
> maybe the Chinese Renminbi.*
>

You've been telling people to sell their bitcoins since 2017. Bitcoin has
increased in value 20X since then. If someone had followed your advice
then, the definitely would not have been the best way to preserve the value
of their bitcoins. In fact, this advice would have cost them 95% of their
value.

No one has a crystal ball, and markets tend dondona good job of pricing in
both future threats and future rewards. So I think it is an error to rely
on any single fact you might know as a basis for concluding the market is
wrong. The market has considered thousands of perhaps millions of distinct
facts, some of which may nullify your fears.


* In a post quantum world there will likely be hundreds or thousands of
> competing quantum resistant crypto currencies floating around (which one
> should somebody use?) and all of them will use considerably more electrical
> energy to make a simple economic transition than the ridiculously huge
> amount that bitcoin already wastes; *
>

Bitcoin doesn't waste energy, it freezes the economic value of energy into
an equivalent value of the coins that are mined.

This sounds strange and alien, but it is exactly how all previous and
current monetary systems operate.

The value of gold is set in large part by the economic cost of mining gold,
which primarily comes down to the energy that must be spent to mine it.

Now consider our debt-based momentary system. Money comes into existence
when an asset is made and used as collateral. Consider mortgages: a whole
house and all the raw materials and labor and energy must be put into
building a house, worth say $500,000 worth of energy. Money is created when
someone takes out a loan if say $400,000 against the house which took
$500,000 worth of economic energy to build. New houses must constantly be
built so more loans can be taken out just to keep the money supply constant.

Yet you don't complain about how energy intensive our current monetary
system is. Bitcoin at least, only need mint a coin once. And once mintes,
no more energy need ever be spent to mint it again to create more bitcoins.
Dollars, have to be minutes continuously and can only be created by first
making things of lasting economic value.

*I strongly suspect most will find it's far more productive to use that
> electrical energy to power AI rather than use it to play around with
> monopoly money. And after observing the nightmarish chaos of the bitcoin
> transition I think people will largely lose their taste for all crypto
> currencies. *
>

I think after cryptocurrencies are made quantum secure there can only be
more interest in them not less. After all, it dissolves your primary
concern. Will you buy it then?

Jason
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