Opinion: If Bitcoin were to be cracked by quantum computing, OG will take over Satoshi's holdings

BlockBeats News, December 15th. Last Saturday, there was intense debate on social media regarding the potential impact of "quantum computers potentially breaching Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin wallet and selling its holdings." This debate stemmed from a Bitcoin price chart shared by YouTuber Josh Otten, showing BTC plummeting to $3. He stated that if a powerful enough quantum computer succeeded in stealing the approximately 1 million BTC held by Bitcoin's anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto and dumped it on the market, this scenario could indeed occur.

Responding to this, long-time Bitcoin hodler Willy Woo stated: "Many OGs (early Bitcoin adopters) would buy the dip in such a flash crash. The Bitcoin network would survive; most Bitcoin would not be immediately at risk." Woo further pointed out that around 4 million BTC are stored in P2PK (Pay-to-Public-Key) addresses, including those of Satoshi Nakamoto. These addresses reveal the full public key directly on-chain when spending, making them theoretically more vulnerable to quantum attacks.

He added that once a Bitcoin wallet's full public key is publicly exposed on the chain, it could face future quantum attack risks—because, under the assumption of having sufficient computational power, a quantum computer theoretically could derive the private key from the public key. In contrast, newer Bitcoin address types are not as susceptible to quantum attacks because they do not expose the full public key on-chain; if the public key is unknown, a quantum computer cannot generate the corresponding private key based on it.