source avatarFrigg 🌸

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Bitcoin developers have put out a serious proposal called BIP-361. And yeah, the topic is quantum computers. For a while now, people have been saying future quantum machines could theoretically break the cryptography Bitcoin relies on. That means coins sitting in older address types could theoretically be stolen. BIP-361 is basically a proposal for that. So how? By making old address types unusable over time. Meaning 5 years after activation, any BTC still sitting in legacy-style wallets would be frozen. You wouldn’t be able to send it, you wouldn’t be able to spend it. The draft proposal describes a phased migration, with a stricter cutoff after five years. So what happens to the 1 million $BTC in Satoshi’s wallet? That would get frozen too. Those coins have never been moved, nobody has touched them, and if BIP-361 ever passes, they could become inaccessible forever. It’s still just a proposal for now, but it’s also true that developers are taking this seriously.

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