What Happens to Satoshi's Coins? Cardano Founder Outlines Quantum Scenarios

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson predicts the potential fate of Satoshi’s coins, drawing from his experience in post-quantum cryptography.

On the Rollup podcast, Hoskinson laid out his credentials in quantum cryptography. The Cardano founder worked on NIST standards and participated in over 250 research publications. He was also part of the team that wrote the first paper on Bitcoin vs. the quantum adversary in 2019, building post-quantum systems.

Three Bitcoin quantum options named

Hoskinson highlighted three quantum options; the first is to do nothing, which might result in the entire system being broken, in the case that a quantum computer exists.

The second option is a soft fork with post-quantum signatures added. In this scenario, Hoskinson speculates that about 15-20% of the $BTC supply might get stolen from vulnerable legacy keys.

The third option is BIP 361, which Hoskinson says is the most extreme of the three options. Owing to its partial recovery capability, about 1.7 million $BTC might be lost.

In response to this, an X user asked the Cardano founder to clarify whether the 1.7 million Bitcoin might be lost. Hoskinson replied, saying, “Lost wallets and Satoshi’s coins.”

Satoshi’s 1.1 million coins vulnerable

Hoskinson indicated that the latest Bitcoin improvement proposal might not be able to save all of the Bitcoin vulnerable to quantum computing.

The new Bitcoin improvement proposal, dubbed BIP-361, seeks to save as much as 34% of Bitcoin’s supply, or more than seven million coins valued at $536 billion, by freezing coins that do not migrate to quantum-resistant addresses in the future.

But Hoskinson says it will still leave as many as 1.7 million coins vulnerable. At least 1.1 million of those coins belong to pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Legacy wallets might account for the majority of the rest of this figure.