Rushing early into post-quantum cryptography could create risks, including bugs or scams posing as wallet upgrades.
ByWayne Jones
Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin could be among the first major targets of a future quantum attack because many of the earliest units sit in addresses where their public keys are already exposed.
Bitcoin security researcher Justin Drake warned in a recent interview with analyst Denis Liu that this vulnerability does not mean users should panic, as BTC held behind hashed addresses can remain protected until they are spent.
Satoshi’s Early Coins Face a Different Risk
The September 21 interview focused on roughly 1
The September 21 interview focused on roughly 1 million BTC mined by Satoshi across 20,000 addresses. Drake explained that the units were mined in 50-BTC blocks, with each address holding one block reward.
“All of these early Bitcoin addresses are raw pub keys,” Drake told Liu. “There isn’t this hashing step, and so they’re all vulnerable.”
He described Satoshi’s holdings as a potential target for “the operator of a quantum computer,” putting them in a different position from BTC that has never been spent from a hashed address.
For ordinary holders, the security issue is tied to spending. A Bitcoin address generally contains a hash of its public key rather than the key itself. But once the cryptocurrency is spent, the public keys become visible to everyone.
The security researcher advised users to send change
The security researcher advised users to send change to a fresh address whenever they spend Bitcoin. If the assets stay in a new address and are never spent, their public key has not yet been exposed.
“Your public key is not revealed publicly when you send funds to a fresh address,” Drake explained. “It’s only revealed publicly the moment you spend from that address. So, so long as you put Bitcoin in a fresh address and you don’t spend, then you’re actually fine.”
He also pointed out that even the fastest quantum machines discussed in current research would need time to crack cryptographic keys.
