Litecoin Founder: 'Satoshi’s Bitcoin Holdings Could Be Quantum Computers’ First Target'

Concerns have emerged that the 1.1 million bitcoins held by Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto could become the first target of future quantum-computer attacks.

According to BeInCrypto on the 13th (Korea time), Litecoin (LTC) founder Charlie Lee said in an interview, “Satoshi’s early wallets use a structure that is less secure than today’s, so if quantum computing becomes a reality, they could be among the first to be targeted.” He added, however, that the current level of quantum-computer technology still falls far short of being able to break Bitcoin’s cryptography in practice.

What Lee pointed to as the problem is the structure of early Bitcoin addresses. In Bitcoin’s early days, the ‘P2PK (Pay-to-Public-Key)’ method—where the public key is exposed as-is—was used, before later shifting to the ‘P2PKH (Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash)’ method, which uses a public-key hash. Because a significant portion of the bitcoins believed to have been mined by Satoshi sit in P2PK addresses, the risk of theft is relatively higher if quantum computers can reverse-engineer the public key.

Lee said, “If Bitcoin is a fully decentralized system, no one should be able to block funds at any specific address,” but added, “Still, it would be worrying if 1 million bitcoins were released onto the market all at once due to quantum computers.”