Cypherpunk Jameson Lopp and colleagues have proposed a bold plan to protect Bitcoin from future quantum computer attacks. Their draft BIP-361, posted on GitHub, calls for freezing roughly 1.7 million BTC, including Satoshi’s $74 billion stash, if owners don’t move them to quantum-secure addresses within a set deadline. The proposal has sparked significant backlash from parts of the Bitcoin community, who view it as a confiscatory departure from core principles.
Cypherpunk Jameson Lopp and five co-authors have proposed freezing quantum-vulnerable coins on the Bitcoin network. The plan targets roughly 1.7 million BTC, including Satoshi Nakamoto’s $74 billion stash, to prevent theft by future quantum computers.
The proposal is the second part of a three-stage draft posted to GitHub called the “Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset”. It addresses a major risk where vulnerable early addresses could be compromised.
BIP-361 builds on BIP-360 released in February, which proposed a new quantum-resistant output type. While that protects new coins, BIP-361 deals with the existing vulnerable supply.
The three-phase plan would first prevent new BTC from being sent to old addresses. Phase B would then invalidate old signatures, effectively freezing un-upgraded coins five years after activation.
Phase C provides a potential recovery mechanism using zero-knowledge proofs. The authors described it as a “private incentive to upgrade” to protect the network’s value.
They stated, “This is not an offensive attack, rather, it is defensive: our thesis is that the Bitcoin ecosystem wishes to defend itself and its interests against those who would prefer to do nothing and allow a malicious actor to destroy both value and trust.”
The proposal has faced significant community pushback for rendering some UTXOs unspendable. Bitcoin protocol developer Mark Erhardt shared the BIP on X and received critical responses.
One commenter called the proposal “highly authoritarian and confiscatory.” Bitcoin Magazine editor Brian Trollz rejected it outright, while TFTC founder Marty Bent called it “laughable.”
Phil Geiger, head of business development at Metaplanet, quipped, “We have to steal people’s money to prevent their money from being stolen.”
