A leading Bitcoin core developer said he would rather see the estimated 5.6 million bitcoin he believes to be lost frozen by the network than to risk them falling into the hands of future quantum hackers.
Jameson Lopp told CoinDesk that while he doesn’t want to freeze anyone’s bitcoin, it may be safer for the network to remove dormant tokens from potential circulation.
“At the moment, I don’t think any of this is necessary,” Lopp said in an interview, stressing that he thinks “contradictory about a potential future threat.” Still, he “would rather that lost or dormant coins be taken out of reach of an attacker rather than have them flow into the hands of an entity that probably doesn’t care much about the ecosystem.”
His comments follow Tuesday’s release of BIP-361, a proposal by Lopp and others that explores phasing out bitcoin’s current cryptographic signatures and over time invalidate transactions from quantum-vulnerable wallets, potentially freezing assets that cannot migrate. At current prices, the dormant tokens Lopp refers to are worth about $420 billion.
In a subsequent post on X, Lopp said he “dislikes” the proposal and hopes it never has to be adopted, describing it as a “rough idea for a contingency plan” rather than a final specification. “I wrote it because I like the alternative even less,” he wrote, adding that in the face of an existential threat, “individual financial incentives outweigh philosophical principles.”
This is not the first time Lopp has expressed his feelings about quantum recovery, which he said amounts to rewarding technological supremacy rather than productive participation in the network. “Quantum miners don’t trade anything,” Lopp wrote. “They are vampires who feed off the system.”
Millions of bitcoin are probably lost forever
About 28% of all bitcoin, or about 5.6 million tokens, haven’t moved in over a decade, Lopp said, adding that he and other analysts consider it likely to be lost. If ever recovered through advances in quantum computing, this amount could introduce significant volatility and undermine trust in the original crypto network, Lopp added.
Although the proposal remains in the early stages with no firm timetable for adoption, it has already sparked heated debate in the community.
Lopp pitched the idea as a way to encourage or even push others to upgrade their wallets before any real threat emerges.
“It’s not that I want to freeze anyone’s bitcoin,” he said. “We think it will be necessary to encourage the ecosystem to upgrade because humans tend to postpone it.”
Any change would require consensus across the decentralized network. Although no formal vote is taking place on the matter, similar upgrades have previously required overwhelming support from miners to activate.
Read more: To freeze or not to freeze: Satoshi and the $440 billion in bitcoin threatened by quantum computing
Massive market panic risk
More significant risks include a loss of confidence in the largest cryptocurrency itself, Lopp said. While a sudden dump of millions of bitcoin on the market could trigger sharp price swings, he said the bigger danger lies in perception.
“It doesn’t even require a massive market dump,” Lopp said. “If there is any credible evidence that someone has the ability to recover lost or vulnerable coins with a quantum computer, you should expect a massive market panic immediately.”
In that scenario, he said, rational holders would likely leave the system until there is confidence that the blockchain has been secured against such threats.
The result is a growing rift in the community that pits Bitcoin’s longstanding promise of immutable, censorship-resistant ownership against the need to defend the network against a potential future shock.
Deviation from Bitcoin’s principles
Market analyst Mati Greenspan, founder of Quantum Economics, said the debate is more philosophical than technological.
“The path to quantum resistance is relatively clear,” he said. “The real question is how the Bitcoin community chooses to handle vulnerable coins along the way.”
In his opinion, freezing dormant bitcoin accounts would mark a significant departure from Bitcoin’s core principles.
“On the one hand, freezing dormant or exposed coins could remove a large tail risk and protect market confidence,” Greenspan said. “On the other hand, it introduces a precedent for intervention that many would argue is more dangerous than the threat itself.”
Greenspan explained that even without a major selloff, visible quantum attacks on dormant wallets could trigger panic across the market.
Others argue that freezing dormant BTC accounts risks undermining Bitcoin’s fundamental guarantees.
“Ownership is becoming conditional. Having keys no longer guarantees you can use,” said Leo Fan, founder of Cysic and former head of quantum resilience at Algorand. “It weakens Bitcoin’s ‘unstoppable money’ promise.”
And while he doesn’t agree with freezing accounts, Fan noted that removing millions of bitcoin from circulation could tighten supply and potentially increase value.
