There's been a recent uptick in coordinated concern trolling about quantum computing threats to BCH, pushing for blanket freezing or burning of "vulnerable" coins. Be alert to the pattern.
The Psyop Pattern
Watch for accounts that:
- Have lurked for years but suddenly surface with urgent demands
- Push blanket solutions (freeze all vulnerable coins!) without technical nuance
- Refuse to engage with existing solutions like Quantumroot
- Rapidly escalate to painting opposition as crazy, fanatical, or "in denial"
- Frame theft as the "only survivable solution"
The goal appears to be creating division and establishing precedent that developers can redistribute coins "for the greater good." Once that precedent exists, the criteria can expand indefinitely: dormant coins, "criminal" coins, sanctioned addresses, coins that "probably" belong to lost wallets…
Why "Protecting" P2PK Coins Is Theft
Satoshi's coins and other early P2PK outputs have the public key directly exposed on-chain. Here's the thing: there is no way to distinguish between Satoshi waking up and moving his coins versus a QC attacker cracking them.
Maybe Satoshi lost his keys. Maybe he's waiting for cover of quantum computers to move them privately. Maybe he deliberately left them as a bounty for cryptographic researchers: 50 BCH per key, canaries in the coal mine announcing when the threat arrives. We don't know, and crucially, we don't need to know. It's not our decision to make.
The locking script is a contract encoding the funder's will. When someone funded a P2PK output, they encoded exact conditions for spending: produce a valid signature from this public key. That's it. No asterisks, no "unless developers decide otherwise later."
"Not your keys, not your coins" cuts both ways. If a quantum computer derives the key, those coins become theirs: still not ours to burn or redistribute.
BCH survived a bigger dump than 1.7M coins during the post-fork period when BTC maxis sold. Someone bought those coins. Someone will buy these too.
The Nuanced Technical Picture
What the panic merchants won't tell you is that different coin types have completely different risk profiles and solutions:
P2PK (public key exposed): ~1.7M coins including Satoshi's. No ethical intervention possible: you cannot distinguish owner from attacker. Treat as QC bounty or at most consider rate-limiting spends (e.g., 50/block matching original emission) to slow market impact.
P2PKH with revealed pubkey: Public key was exposed in a previous spend. Owners are either active (can migrate now) or abandoned their coins. A commit-delay-reveal soft fork could protect active owners without theft: commit to your transaction hash, wait N blocks, then reveal and execute. QC attackers can't front-run because they'd need to crack the key AND beat your commitment.
P2PKH with unrevealed pubkey: Only the hash is on-chain. Already significantly safer. Stop reusing addresses.
New coins going forward: Quantumroot vaults will become available on mainnet after May 15, 2026. 256-bit classical, 128-bit quantum security using only SHA256. Problem solved for anyone who cares to use it.
The Bottom Line
BCH already has the technical solutions. Quantumroot is here. The May 2026 upgrade enables efficient quantum-resistant wallets. Wallet developers will be integrating support.
What BCH doesn't need is panicked governance changes that establish precedent for coin confiscation. The "cure" of developer-controlled redistribution may be far worse than the "disease" of some old coins eventually being swept by whoever cracks them first.
If someone pushes hard for freezing or burning coins while ignoring these distinctions, ask yourself why.
And remember the CHIP process: default answer is NO.
Status quo is: QC-vulnerable coins are fair game for QC-attackers. If someone wants to change that: burden of proof is on them.
Watch out for another suspicious tell: presenting any solution as if it were a done deal.
Posted by bitcoincashautist
1 Comment
Good post. Note also this pattern of discussion, where the goal is to move to step 5 as fast as possible because 2-4 is a complete waste of everyone’s time:
notice that this same pattern occurs absolutely every single time there is any kind of discussion in BCH (or the world in general).
1. There’s a problem
2. Some people say it’s not a problem, who immediately get ignored because dismissing a problem does not solve it (even if the problem is just other people’s concern about an imaginary issue, the concern is itself a problem)
3. A bunch of other people spend a while acting superior because they know there’s a real problem and can’t believe people are dismissing it, must be because they are morons. This is just the inverse of step 2, it also contributes nothing to the discussion.
4. It is explained that the status quo is how things will be until someone has a solution to change it, which can then be debated on its merits
5a. The issue dies there because nobody does the PoW on a proposal.
5b. Someone comes back with a proposal after a while, and it can be debated.
This pattern repeats every single time. So as a public service announcement, the more people that recognise this pattern and can help us speed through to step 5a or 5b each time they see it the better.