Old wallets risk becoming easy prey for hackers unless the community decides on a radical protocol update.
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CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju highlighted a critical vulnerability of a significant portion of the Bitcoin market supply to quantum computing.
The rise of powerful new systems will let attackers calculate private keys for addresses with public data already on the blockchain. Cryptocurrency security currently relies on mathematical complexity. This defense will become insignificant against quantum processing power.
A total of 6.89 M bitcoins face hacking threats. Out of this amount, 1.91 M reside on outdated P2PK addresses with originally exposed keys. The remaining 4.98 M coins belong to users who executed outgoing transactions at least once. This action inadvertently revealed their wallet technical data.
Coins dormant for over a decade represent a special risk category. These inactive wallets hold over 3.4 M bitcoins. This volume includes roughly 1 M coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto
Such wealth concentration creates a massive financial incentive to develop specialized hacking algorithms. The total value of these assets reaches hundreds of billions of dollars.
A technical solution exists. Its implementation depends on social consensus. Any attempt to forcefully freeze or move assets for security purposes will inevitably face resistance from those who value blockchain immutability above everything else.
Ju emphasizes that slow community decision-making could become the fatal factor.
Developers must prepare the network before the mass arrival of quantum computing power. Otherwise, a series of chaotic hard forks awaits Bitcoin. Such events can severely undermine trust in the first cryptocurrency.
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute advertising or investment advice. Please do your own research before making any decisions.
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