Current and Future Threats to Bitcoin

[Dogedegen]

I've been reading different threads over the years regarding potential attacks on Bitcoin. Some are more realistic, others depend. I am not convinced by some potential attacks, but others are interesting. My issue is that information is spread throughout many locations and topics. I've seen many threads just on quantum computers so the information is scattered. Even if I will start with this currently popular threat, this is not another quantum computers thread!! Please make sure to take notice of this.

The groups are not ordered according to likelihood of happening. I find it is very hard to determine the likelihood of these things and especially compare them. It is very similar to crystal ball speculation so I will avoid making detailed probabilities of likelihood. I will give my opinion on the threat assesment which includes my personal views on the likelihood based on where we are today and based on some research. To give one example I find that the risk of regulatory crackdown on the level of a ban at least in the US is very low and it is explained down below why.

Group 1: Technological Threats
Everything about Bitcoin is technological, its security relies from the use of various cryptographic processes in a very smart way. Naturally the risk from technological threats is always present and they can be of different severity and impact. It can range from small level DOS of individual nodes to a complete rule or consensus collapse.
1.1 Quantum Computers
Firstly we will talk about quantum computers for 2 reasons. One is that because there is a lot of unknowns and many assumptions with this coming technology. We are just not that sure of what exactly it will be capable of in practice and to what extent, but what we can be sure of is that a lot of serious money is being invested in making this happen. Secondly, this thread has been coming up very often at times but I've seen some discussion threads that are even 10 years old. The two main areas of concerns are:
1) SHA256. Many people don't know that this hash function is used at two locations. One is Bitcoin mining and the other is addresses. The risk here primarily comes from Grover’s algorithm, it would effectively reduce the number of required steps in mining from 2ⁿ to 2^n/2 which means 2²⁵⁶ reduces down to 2¹²⁸. Is this a real concern? No! The ASICs that are mining on Bitcoin today are very specialized and efficient machines compared to a general purpose computer. As it stands today it is very unlikely that a general purpose quantum computers is going to be more efficient at mining even if it has to complete fewer steps. If these machines become feasible it is likely that we are going to see something like quantum ASICs but this would come much later in the future if at all. The practical feasibility of quantum computers is still a big question mark.

So what about addresses? In the case of a complete compromise of SHA256 an attacker would be able to take any address and derive its public key this is called a preimage. Remember though that as soon as you spend money from any address you expose its public key. So the pool of exposed public keys would extend to all addresses regardless of whether they were used or not. On its own this is not a risk at all. Only if both SHA256 is fully compromised and the signature algorithm is also fully compromised (in our case ECDSA) would this become a big issue. However, based on the knowledge regarding hash functions and quantum computers today a complete compromise of SHA256 is extremely unlikely. Threat assessment: Very low.

2) ECDSA. The other part of the quantum computer story relates to the signature algorithm that Bitcoin uses which is the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm. This one is more tricky. The security for the user funds rests on the assumption that the private key remains private even if the public key is exposed. Any time you use an address you expose its public key, which means that only addresses that never made a sending transactions don't have their public keys exposed. But how would a quantum computer do this? The algorithm that would be breaking ECDSA runs in exponential time and with 2¹²⁸ of effective security to put it simply this means that it would take standard computers millions of years to compromise a single key. A quantum computer is able to use Shor's algorithm and this would change the time from exponential to polynomial. In practice it could means anything from days to hours to compromise a key depending on the size of the computer.
Potential targets:

• Any addresses that are reused.
• Satoshi's coins.
• Other coins stored in P2PK addresses, as these addresses did not use SHA256 yet so they public key is already exposed.

Some rough estimate puts the number of vulnerable coins at several million today!

Caveats: The quantum computers that we have today are nowhere near in size that is needed to use Shor's algorithm effectively. Even using aggressive forecasts they will unlikely be anywhere close in the next 5 to 10 years. Scaling quantum computers is extremely hard. Further there are many other unknowns here as this is all based in theory. It is possible that at that scale these computers run into other issues that we are not aware of today.
Mitigations: Switching to quantum safe algorithms. This is relatively straightforward, the difficulty is primarily in picking the right algorithm and tradeoffs. Some make bigger signatures, others make verification and signing slower or any mix of this.
Controversy: Even if we switch to a safe algorithm, what about Satohi's era coins? Some advocate for locking them, others advocate for leaving them. Surely if left in the open actors will eventually steal and sell them which is bad for everyone. If locked this would not happen, but that could also set a very dangerous precedent for the future. Addressing this will be a bigger challenge than adopting a new algorithm.
Threat assessment: Very high, but not right now and only if not addressed at all.


1.2 Centralization of  Infrastructure
Bitcoin mining has become a massive industry. Majority of the hash power is concentrated in large mining pools and data centers. On the other hand many nodes today run on centralized cloud platforms. Even though it is most often individuals who are renting their services, still there is a centralization of the providers. Some potential risks here are:

• Miner collusion. Everyone knows the good old threat of the 51% attack. I consider this risk overblown. Firstly, the incentive for not doing this is massive. If you remain a honest miner you can continue earning money for a long time. If you collude to attack the network, you can only do so once. The network can change the hash function and effectively bankrupt the miners over night. While this would hurt the Bitcoin network too, it would cause more losses to the miners. Second, there are probably unprecedented legal risks here. Are you allowed to abuse the Bitcoin blockchain to cause harm to other big businesses just because it is a public network and asset? I doubt it.
• Node centralization. This creates centralized points of failure and they can be exploited by targeted attacks or even interference by states. However the overall damage that can be done here is not large and certainly not catastrophic as long as there are nodes all around the world. Currently even with some provider centralization Bitcoin has node almost everywhere in the world. An attack through this means is extremely difficult if not impossible. Attacks could probably be mostly on targeted like disrupting some miners temporarily for self gain.
• Miner censorship. The more centralized the mining operations are the more vulnerable they will be to pressure. They can force miners to censor some transactions or addresses. We have seen already a few cases of this. If they manage to push this narrative on us it would harm one of the major features of Bitcoin, its censorship resistance. Countermeasures would probably include some kind of obfuscations although I am not certain where we are with this today. Is it possible to submit a transaction using some methods so the miner does not know what the transaction is about until he actually includes it in a block?
• Development Centralization. While the development of Bitcoin is indeed very heavy on the open source, the reality is not without its issues. It relies strongly on a fairly small group of long time contributors and maintainers. The exact risks here are unknown. Bitcoin has one of the most rigorous technical review processes making infiltration by shady actors very difficult. However, state agencies have been known to infiltrate and corrupt open source projects slowly over time. There are also other issues relating to gatekeeping or ideologies. It is very difficult to change the minds of this group of people on certain topics. Without their approval you can't get such changes into Bitcoin.

Threat assessment: Medium. Obviously each point has a different risk profile but it is easier to summarize it like this into an average.


1.3 Protocol Level Exploits
As I have already say, the Bitcoin project has an extremely scrutinized codebase and its review process is very good. Still with any complex software there is a risk of undiscovered bugs. Small bugs are not an issue, we are talking about critical flaws relating to smaller issues such as DOS attacks to complete consensus failure or bypassing of fundamental rules. We've had some scary examples in the past:

• Value overflow bug, which could have allowed someone to create billions of BTC in a single block. This was an very early bug in 2010 where the review process was not that good and practically there were no contributors compared to today.
• Inflation bug, which could have allowed someone to create Bitcoin out of nothing. https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/.

For better of worse Bitcoin does not have a feature where you can revert an individual addresses transactions like ETH. This means that the whole chain would have to be reverted to fix a critical inflation bug for example. Threat assessment: Very High. I don't know the ways in which this particular thing could be improve to limit the probability of a massive exploit occurring but due to the potential damage that even 1 successful exploit could cause I rated it so high


Group 2: Legal and Regulatory Threats
I've mentioned slightly regulatory pressure on miners in the technological threats but here I want to go a bit wider on these. Sometimes people talk about how Bitcoin could be made completely illegal in favor of CBDCs or some other things. I consider the threat of a complete ban extremely low at least in the USA. The industry is simply too large and all the main powers that are in the financial world are inside Bitcoin. Blackrock can effectively block any such attempts on their own. It is possible that this happens in other countries, but we just need 1 more large country to follow USA's path and this will cement the global power race regarding Bitcoin. However, there are other regulatory threats that are always looming.

1) Attack on privacy tools. We've seen what happened to Tornado Cash and other privacy tool developers. These are dangerous precedents as they could continue their reach, maybe even outlawing complete methods like Coinjoin.
2) Pressure on self-custody and the fight against a no-KYC world. This one is not balanced and depends heavily on countries. In the EU we already seem extreme attempts at getting complete information and control over citizens. I don't think attacks on self-custody will stop anytime soon. An extreme version of this would be that all self-custody is outlawed.
3) Copyright, CSAM, malware. There are many things stored in the Bitcoin blockchain. It can be made even worse by leaking state secrets and more illegal material. This could be used by politicians to make laws targeting node operators and other individuals who use the Bitcoin blockchain.
4) Instability. If you look at regulations from a global perspective, they are very much changing and different. Perhaps we will see a world where even more countries have extreme restrictions on capital controls. Retaining Bitcoin in such a country in its current way is not going to work. They would have to use regulations to fight it or outright block it.

Threat assessment: Medium to High. Regulations must be fought as they are proposed. We can't predict what idiocy their will come up with next. So anytime someone does something stupid like claim that they are Satoshi they should be put in jail.  


Group 3: Economic and Market Dynamics
1) Stablecoin Dominance. Let's face it no matter how much of the volume is fake in these transactions stablecoins are use a lot for many purposes. They have their own risks and benefits that are not directly related to this thread. I see a way of attacking Bitcoin by heavy promotion of existing and new corporate stablecoins. Here Bitcoin risks slipping just to being a reserve and speculative asset losing its medium of exchange function. That would be pretty bad even if not catastrophic. There is no way to replicate the stablecoin performance of other more centralized chains onto Bitcoin. Perhaps deploying one on some layer 2 network could work?

2) Custody centralization. We already see that ETFs and Custodians hold a massive amount of Bitcoin. There are many things that can go wrong here. Everything from security over to regulatory risk and narrative control. These institutions may be able to influence Bitcoin's public image and even cause disruption if we find ourselves in a major fork issues or other existential event. Let's not forget market manipulation risks and whatnot. So this centralization of custody introduces a large systemic risk that was not present before.

3) Fee market collapse. The current idea is that transactions fees slowly replace block subsidies as the primary miner incentive as Bitcoin ages and gains more value. If there is not enough demand for block space for whatever reason the fee market may not be enough. many factors are influencing this. For example people holding their coins with custodians instead of their own wallets and using them, competition from layer 2 like LN and so on. While the consequences are not catastrophic at first it is a question how this would have to be solved. At the beginning it would slowly reduce the Bitcoin budget and stall the hash rate growth or even lead to its reduction. This increases the vulnerability of a 51% attack and would cause frequent slowdowns in confirmation times as the hashrate continues get lower. Since the fixed supply is one of Bitcoin's core value propositions we can't just introduce something like extra inflation like altcoins have.

Threat assessment: Medium.


Group 4: Social and Behavioral Risks
1) User Apathy: I've seen this discussed in different ways in different topics. What if fewer and fewer people care about self-custody, decentralization and privacy as time goes on? I don't think anyone is trying to do this as a targeted attack yet but they can make this worse by trying to persuade people against these things. Combined with regulatory pressure this could become very dangerous. The main features of this network such as its censorship resistance are only possible because so many participating parties care deeply about the aforementioned things. The cypher punk spirit must stay alive in Bitcoin.

2) Social attacks through narratives and disinformation: On its own this is no longer effective. There are hundreds if not thousands of obituaries for Bitcoin already. Everything from Bitcoin being for criminals to its a ponzi. They have tried all kinds of arguments and narratives and none of it ultimately work, but I think it could come back in a combined attack. One must keep in mind that the situation regarding enemies is not like there is just 1 group waiting to attack Bitcoin. There are many different groups, some of which work together and others who are on their own. Some have similar reasons to attack Bitcoin others have very different ones. They may be waiting for a good opportunity to do something, and if there is one kind of attack effectively in progress they may join with their own attack for their own reasons.

3) Generational shift: This is a bit similar to apathy but different. Bitcoin does not exist in its bubble. Let's be clear, Bitcoin is unique in every way. There is no altcoin that even resembles Bitcoin at all. They are all created to enrich the founders first. None of them come closed to Bitcoin's decentralization and it is impossible to replicate it! Still new users may prefer newer blockchains such as ETH or Solana for different things that they provide be it NFTs, memes, DeFi or whatever. Some argue that we should just ignore such users but I disagree. We can't have a world that is on Bitcoin standard if we just dismiss large groups of people. Bitcoin must offer advantages besides being digital gold to retain its large advantage.

Threat assessment: Low to Medium.


Group 5: Competitive or Innovative Risks
1) Protocol Stagnation. While Bitcoin's slow and thorough governance model has many advantages, it is not without its risk. It makes it very slow to adopt new features if it adopts them at all. While it reduces the risk of new attacks, it also delays the integration of potentially valuable upgrades that users may want. For example if you want privacy and anonymity you have to use Monero, if you want a stablecoin you have to go to some of the many other altcoins that support it and so on. The landscape is evolving and while Bitcoin is unique in many ways there is some risk of it becoming something like a legacy cryptocurrency. This would go in hand with the idea of Bitcoin being digital gold, but I don't know if that single use case is enough for it to conquer the world.

2) Rapid Innovation in other projects. This is directly related to the first point and they could be presented as one, it is kind of the other side of the coin. While Bitcoin evolves slowly for various reasons, the innovation on the other side is rapid and going in all kinds of direction. Many of the innovations are useless that is for sure, but not everything is and it is clear that people are using it. DeFi of the kind that is not really possible in Bitcoin right now is responsible for a lot of transactions.,

3) Layer 2 Fragmentation. While this is so much worse in the altcoin world, it still affects Bitcoin too. Since scaling on the main layer is not the target of the developers or maybe not even possible at all, the only other choice are layer 2s like Lightning which is where the innovation is happening. While having a single layer 2 would make things simpler it also introduces limitations in terms of features. The more layer 2 or even layer 3s that Bitcoin has the harder it will be for an normal person to get involved with it. And to make things worse liquidity is then fragmented instead of it being available at the same level for everything.

Threat assessment: Medium.




I want to hear what you think about these matters. If you have any other suggestions for groups or threats, I will gladly include them if they make sense. Please don't talk about extinction level solar flares or meteorites. Those events are not a direct threat to Bitcoin. Any event that is a threat and danger to humanity as a whole is not a direct threat to Bitcoin. If the world is on the verge of collapse, Bitcoin will not be a priority during such circumstances and it may survive anyway. There may be some mistakes in some details but I don't think we should get too technical here, I did a lot of research while writing this. Remember that the threat assessment depends also on the consequences if something happens. So even if something has a low chance of happening if the consequences are potentially catastrophic then the risk is very high.  I would really like to hear how others see the threat level of each group.

I just included some things per group, we could add a few more but I think that I should also not go too deep per category like 10 technological threats. The idea is to get a perspective on the kinds of threats that could come and some likely threats within those groups. Most certainly it would be impossible to cover every single threat.

[PX-Z]

Majority of the hash power is concentrated in large mining fools and data centers

It's "mining pools", letter "p" is too far away from "f" in keyboard for a typo, but fools is also very accepted lol.

I want to hear what you think about these matters...

Those technological problem (quantum computers, depreciated crypto tech, hash generation) are not an issue in the future, Bitcoin is continuing development, it adapts the most safe and secured  way cryptographically. If Bitcoin is in danger for its technology used, banks are not excepted to that.

The only real threat I see ahead is government mandated regulation. On one hand, it could undermine Bitcoin's core principle of decentralization. On the other, it might also make Bitcoin more accessible to the broader public. It's truly a double-edged sword.

[d5000]

Better thread that I initially thought, I hope it's not ChatGPT'ed I comment only on those I consider somewhat relevant:

- Node centralization: This could be indeed a factor if some current tendencies, for example the UTXO set bloat, continue. There are however mitigation strategies for this, like Utreexo. Of course, it would be a much higher risk if the developers eventually decide to increase the block capacity drastically. I think currently that is however far away. The sidechain model, much more cost efficient, is still on the table. However, until this becomes really critical the centralization grade has to be 99%+, so the risk this happens is quite low.
- Development centralization: There is a general risk that miners, developers and a big part of the users (above all, the wealthy ones) collude if the Bitcoin decentralization/censorship resistance ethos vanishes. This could be the case if the percentage of users who valuate censorship resistance decreases, for example due to an increase of speculative users who don't bother about censorship resistance at all (e.g. ETF investors). State agencies could take advantage of this and infiltrate the development team, reducing privacy gradually. It's not something I expect soon, but something that could happen if the cypherpunks in the Bitcoin Core team give up after so much hate they get for tiny changes. This is also what you address in User Apathy a bit, and I agree this could form a dangerous mix. But not now.
- Illegal content on the blockchain: There are technical solutions on the table allowing nodes to reduce that risk. Pruning is already possible today, but for archival nodes there may be more advanced, zero knowledge based techniques available.
- Fee market collapse. This is indeed a potential problem. I think thus one should not rule out changes in the mining reward scheme, above all if there are possibilities to create at least a minimal tail emission without affecting the 21 million coins limit.
- Altcoin competition (basically Group 5). I think this threat was much higher around 2015, but now has vanished -- even if Ethereum really "flips" Bitcoin (very unlikely) it is not a direct competitor because its economic model and characteristics are drastically different. It could eventually increase again if Bitcoin is facing a hard fork, for example for quantum resistance. In this case, other protocols have again a small chance to try to catch up, but it will be very difficult.

BTW I consider the quantum threat very low even for ECDSA, because there is a mitigation strategy which does not require action until the threat really materializes: it is possible to block transactions if they don't come from users who include a proof that they know their private key before they transact. Yes, that doesn't help for Satoshi's coins, but even if they are stolen, it will be simply a redistribution.

[Dogedegen]

Majority of the hash power is concentrated in large mining fools and data centers

It's "mining pools", letter "p" is too far away from "f" in keyboard for a typo, but fools is also very accepted lol.

lol indeed, but is a nice mistake which I have now corrected thanks to your post. I would not consider it a typo but more a slip of the hand, if you left hand is hovering at WASD then it is very possible to make such errors.

I want to hear what you think about these matters...

Those technological problem (quantum computers, depreciated crypto tech, hash generation) are not an issue in the future, Bitcoin is continuing development, it adapts the most safe and secured  way cryptographically. If Bitcoin is in danger for its technology used, banks are not excepted to that.

The only real threat I see ahead is government mandated regulation. On one hand, it could undermine Bitcoin's core principle of decentralization. On the other, it might also make Bitcoin more accessible to the broader public. It's truly a double-edged sword.

I don't think it is that simple for the technological stuff. In case of quantum computers you must know that upgrading a bank is much easier for something like this. Just because there are other targets that does not mean they won't attack us! There are many parties who would love to destroy Bitcoin. To make things worse I've seen some reports of the alternative signature algorithms and they are not good. Some are huge! Like we would lose so much transaction throughput. Without a block size increase we would be doomed with such large signatures.

Better thread that I initially thought, I hope it's not ChatGPT'ed I comment only on those I consider somewhat relevant:

Thanks!! It took a while to put it together, if you have any other ideas for inclusion I'll take them. Of course I use ChatGPT like I use a search engine but mostly to get some inspiration for ideas like when I can't get a good name for a group. But one must be very very careful because it often gives terrible information. I have one example from this thread. It quickly rushed to state that the likelihood of a complete regulatory ban in the USA is very likely.

Ridiculous hallucination! With Blackrock and other major financial players on board the risk is as close to 0% as it gets.  They control both parties the public positions of democrats are not relevant.

- Node centralization: This could be indeed a factor if some current tendencies, for example the UTXO set bloat, continue. There are however mitigation strategies for this, like Utreexo. Of course, it would be a much higher risk if the developers eventually decide to increase the block capacity drastically. I think currently that is however far away. The sidechain model, much more cost efficient, is still on the table. However, until this becomes really critical the centralization grade has to be 99%+, so the risk this happens is quite low.

Yeah that is why I think these things are more likely to be used for targeted attacks on specific entities. This is also why we must always insist that people run nodes, the more there are and better distributed the lower the risk. It is one of those threats that can be mitigated the cheapest I think. I don't know about Ultreexo or if that is coming.

- Development centralization: There is a general risk that miners, developers and a big part of the users (above all, the wealthy ones) collude if the Bitcoin decentralization/censorship resistance ethos vanishes. This could be the case if the percentage of users who valuate censorship resistance decreases, for example due to an increase of speculative users who don't bother about censorship resistance at all (e.g. ETF investors). State agencies could take advantage of this and infiltrate the development team, reducing privacy gradually. It's not something I expect soon, but something that could happen if the cypherpunks in the Bitcoin Core team give up after so much hate they get for tiny changes. This is also what you address in User Apathy a bit, and I agree this could form a dangerous mix. But not now.

Yes. I didn't sort the threats really between current and future and in this case I also think this is more a long-term trend. Even with all the ordinals and mania we had in the last bull run, I think there are many users around with strong cypherpunk ethos. I know many users that radically refuse anything else other than Bitcoin, they even actively avoid making potential USD profit in altcoins. They just live the huge difference between Bitcoin and an altcoin. As long as many people like this are around we are good, but we must educate the coming generation on these matters. I think modernity is setting up most younger people to be apathetic monsters of consumption.

- Illegal content on the blockchain: There are technical solutions on the table allowing nodes to reduce that risk. Pruning is already possible today, but for archival nodes there may be more advanced, zero knowledge based techniques available.

Here I am a bit more concerned because of lawmakers, they are tyranical and crazy. You've seen already attempts like in EU to scan all media locally on devices for CSAM and other crazy proposals. We don't know what they will do if they fully set their sights on this topic in regards to Bitcoin.

- Fee market collapse. This is indeed a potential problem. I think thus one should not rule out changes in the mining reward scheme, above all if there are possibilities to create at least a minimal tail emission without affecting the 21 million coins limit.

For me the hard supply limit is a hill I would die on. If you look at the top 100 coins there are very few that have this, most are inflationary sell outs even those that includes burns to balance the new inflation. I am afraid of the potential solutions that will be proposed or pushed by various groups on this. I would like to know what Core developers think about this issue.

- Altcoin competition (basically Group 5). I think this threat was much higher around 2015, but now has vanished -- even if Ethereum really "flips" Bitcoin (very unlikely) it is not a direct competitor because its economic model and characteristics are drastically different. It could eventually increase again if Bitcoin is facing a hard fork, for example for quantum resistance. In this case, other protocols have again a small chance to try to catch up, but it will be very difficult.

Pretty fair view. I think it is just important to remember that Bitcoin does not exist in a bubble and that we shouldn't dismiss potential use cases or users will find solutions somewhere else.

BTW I consider the quantum threat very low even for ECDSA, because there is a mitigation strategy which does not require action until the threat really materializes: it is possible to block transactions if they don't come from users who include a proof that they know their private key before they transact. Yes, that doesn't help for Satoshi's coins, but even if they are stolen, it will be simply a redistribution.

I am not sure about quantum computers, I have many questions and doubts there. I think first it will be a big difference if someone is able to compromise 1 address slowly versus someone almost instantly compromising hundreds, thousands or all of the addresses. So there is a huge difference between these two scenarios, slow distribution or someone being able to dump 1M of satoshi's coins. Also I don't get from a legal point of view. We exclude hackers and bad actors like North Korea. Let's say Microsoft developers the first working quantum computer that can do this and nobody else has one. Are they legally allowed to steal those coins? How could that be legal?

Also how would that thing with the proof work? You have more information?

[MagicalGrove]

That’s a very thoughtful breakdown, thanks for taking the time to put it together.

I agree with you that node centralization, while a long-term concern, is not an immediate threat as long as mitigation strategies like Utreexo continue to develop. Development centralization is the one I personally watch most closely — not because it’s happening right now, but because user apathy and the shift toward speculative investors could make it easier for powerful players to push through changes in the future. paygonline

The illegal content issue is interesting too — pruning and ZK solutions definitely help, but it seems like a constant balancing act between practicality for node operators and maintaining the integrity of the chain.

On the fee market, I also think it’s wise not to rule out a tail emission or some other change if it ever gets to a critical stage. Hopefully, it won’t be needed, but it’s good to at least keep that conversation open.

Altcoin competition feels a lot less threatening today than it did years ago, though like you said, a hard fork for something like quantum resistance could change that dynamic. I also share your view that quantum is still a low-priority threat at this point, since mitigation strategies exist and can be applied when/if it ever becomes real.

Overall, I think most of these risks are worth keeping on the radar but not panicking about in the short term.

[Nathrixxx]

Maybe if anyone of us ever had a clue about possible threats to bitcoin network, maybe we may not have gone this far in using it, once the protocols upon which bitcoin network was built on blockchain, things will always remain the same as always, because no codes can break in them except been in consensus.

I must confess this content from OP let me remember reading newspaper, you've done much to make the write ups and they are quite interesting to read.

[Nothingtodo]

If Satoshi is alive and quantum computers threaten to cause major damage to Bitcoin, then Satoshi Nakamoto will definitely become active and protect Bitcoin.
Again, the way large companies and firms (MSTR, METAPLANET, Strive, Capital B etc) are increasing their holdings in Bitcoin is also a kind of bad sign for Bitcoin.
However, the way Satoshi created Bitcoin, supercomputers and quantum computers cannot do any harm, and especially since Bitcoin is millions of times more powerful than supercomputers, if quantum computers really become a threat to Bitcoin, then Satoshi himself will certainly not be active.

[d5000]

Here I am a bit more concerned because of lawmakers, they are tyranical and crazy. You've seen already attempts like in EU to scan all media locally on devices for CSAM and other crazy proposals. We don't know what they will do if they fully set their sights on this topic in regards to Bitcoin.

The techniques I referred to allow to store the blockchain without storing all data. In theory you can craft something like this already today. If you spot a public key which is not really a key, but an image, you in theory could delete it as long as you have the merkle tree of the transaction.

Zero-knowledge techniques like ZeroSync allow an "intermediate" kind of node which is in-between a SPV node and a full node, it has almost the capacities of a full node. Where it becomes complicated is if you want to "support" the network hosting the whole blockchain. But the mini-blockchain scheme shows that it may not even be necessary to have completely full nodes at all. Maybe at the end we will have ZeroSync-style nodes and all NFTs and spam will be possible to be erased without losing anything.

For me the hard supply limit is a hill I would die on. If you look at the top 100 coins there are very few that have this, most are inflationary sell outs even those that includes burns to balance the new inflation. I am afraid of the potential solutions that will be proposed or pushed by various groups on this. I would like to know what Core developers think about this issue.

There are some Core developers supporting the idea, but the majority is against it, as far as I know.

I think first it will be a big difference if someone is able to compromise 1 address slowly versus someone almost instantly compromising hundreds, thousands or all of the addresses. So there is a huge difference between these two scenarios, slow distribution or someone being able to dump 1M of satoshi's coins.

It becomes less scary if you know that the daily trading volume has already been close to a million in some of the "dips" in recent years (in 2024 there was a day where 900,000 BTC were sold). Once the coins are redistributed, they are no longer in limbo. Even without quantum computers, Satoshi could still sell them, or hackers steal the coin with conventional means, even if it seems rather unlikely now.

Of course stealing Satoshi's coins would not be legal. I think that's not even a question, as long as he doesn't leave some message somewhere signed with all of his keys.

Also how would that thing with the proof work? You have more information?

It was proposed by Lightning inventor Tadge Dryja. I've described it here. There are ways an owner of a private key can prove that he has the key before transaction. A simple example is posting a TXID of a transaction to the blockchain without posting the transaction, and then post the transaction some blocks later. A quantum hacker can't do that if he doesn't know the public key to derive the private key from via Shor's algorithm.

[Rustam Meraj]

If Satoshi is alive and quantum computers threaten to cause major damage to Bitcoin, then Satoshi Nakamoto will definitely become active and protect Bitcoin.
Again, the way large companies and firms (MSTR, METAPLANET, Strive, Capital B etc) are increasing their holdings in Bitcoin is also a kind of bad sign for Bitcoin.
However, the way Satoshi created Bitcoin, supercomputers and quantum computers cannot do any harm, and especially since Bitcoin is millions of times more powerful than supercomputers, if quantum computers really become a threat to Bitcoin, then Satoshi himself will certainly not be active.

It is similar situation with big companies buying much of Bitcoin. This makes Bitcoin more accepted it also means few groups might have too much power which goes against Bitcoin original goal of being decentralized. As for its security Bitcoin is very secure right now but future with powerful quantum computers is real threat. Good thing is that Bitcoin community is already working on ways to protect it from this technology. And regarding Satoshi Nakamoto come back to protect his/her Bitcoin so this can not be possible if he/she has died because mostly rumours are saying that he/she has died.

[adadrian]

if there will be any threats it wont be for a long time. we have at least another 20 years when the last bit coin will be.mined imo.

[EarnOnVictor]

You are thoughtful about these points, and all the points are vital, even though some are more vital than others. My conclusion is that many of these threats or supposed threats are not just happening, some have started years back, and Bitcoin has been standing unaffected, and it will continue to do that. In this world we are in, there's nothing perfect (pros and cons), and there is nothing without an antagonist. It is about Bitcoin resilience and the commitment of the developers, protectors and adopters that will determine a lot. The government, technical, social/religious etc. will try, but I know that Bitcoin will alwasy survive.

[betswift]

You are thoughtful about these points, and all the points are vital, even though some are more vital than others. My conclusion is that many of these threats or supposed threats are not just happening, some have started years back, and Bitcoin has been standing unaffected, and it will continue to do that. In this world we are in, there's nothing perfect (pros and cons), and there is nothing without an antagonist. It is about Bitcoin resilience and the commitment of the developers, protectors and adopters that will determine a lot. The government, technical, social/religious etc. will try, but I know that Bitcoin will alwasy survive.

Some are only on paper, some are already in motion, but overall, no blocker would stop BTC from moving forward, too think that way.

BTC is the only coin to take so much and to go forward no matter the case.

[joniboini]

It is similar situation with big companies buying much of Bitcoin. This makes Bitcoin more accepted it also means few groups might have too much power which goes against Bitcoin original goal of being decentralized.

Is there a factual case where companies that own a lot of coins influence how miners prioritize transactions or how updates get pushed? I can't recall any big controversy other than the concentration of supply as of now. I believe miners' concentration on some countries also happened way before Strategy or other companies bought tons of Bitcoin, too. It will be interesting to see how the community will handle that if such things happen. If those players are here for the profit, I find it hard to believe they'll use such a destructive strategy after pouring millions to buy BTC.

[john_egbert]

It is similar situation with big companies buying much of Bitcoin. This makes Bitcoin more accepted it also means few groups might have too much power which goes against Bitcoin original goal of being decentralized.

Is there a factual case where companies that own a lot of coins influence how miners prioritize transactions or how updates get pushed? I can't recall any big controversy other than the concentration of supply as of now. I believe miners' concentration on some countries also happened way before Strategy or other companies bought tons of Bitcoin, too. It will be interesting to see how the community will handle that if such things happen. If those players are here for the profit, I find it hard to believe they'll use such a destructive strategy after pouring millions to buy BTC.

I too didn't hear much about it: the fees dictate that, not how many coins you own.

And I too don't think they will bite the hand that feeds them, unless they are sure they will be in a good position to do so.

[Dogedegen]

Here I am a bit more concerned because of lawmakers, they are tyranical and crazy. You've seen already attempts like in EU to scan all media locally on devices for CSAM and other crazy proposals. We don't know what they will do if they fully set their sights on this topic in regards to Bitcoin.

The techniques I referred to allow to store the blockchain without storing all data. In theory you can craft something like this already today. If you spot a public key which is not really a key, but an image, you in theory could delete it as long as you have the merkle tree of the transaction.

Zero-knowledge techniques like ZeroSync allow an "intermediate" kind of node which is in-between a SPV node and a full node, it has almost the capacities of a full node. Where it becomes complicated is if you want to "support" the network hosting the whole blockchain. But the mini-blockchain scheme shows that it may not even be necessary to have completely full nodes at all. Maybe at the end we will have ZeroSync-style nodes and all NFTs and spam will be possible to be erased without losing anything.

Would that really be so good? I mean we would radically be changing from a chain with complete history to one that only has partial history and traceability even if all UTXOs are verified. I have seen some of this stuff in the altcoin world and I don't like it. Most nodes there don't have the full history and the archival nodes are insane servers at AWS or something. They call this decentralized and scalable lol.

There are some Core developers supporting the idea, but the majority is against it, as far as I know.

That is good, it is important that it stays that way.

I think first it will be a big difference if someone is able to compromise 1 address slowly versus someone almost instantly compromising hundreds, thousands or all of the addresses. So there is a huge difference between these two scenarios, slow distribution or someone being able to dump 1M of satoshi's coins.

It becomes less scary if you know that the daily trading volume has already been close to a million in some of the "dips" in recent years (in 2024 there was a day where 900,000 BTC were sold). Once the coins are redistributed, they are no longer in limbo. Even without quantum computers, Satoshi could still sell them, or hackers steal the coin with conventional means, even if it seems rather unlikely now.

Once it is done it is done that is an optimistic view on it. I like it but one must remember that this will not come without a price to be paid even if it is not permanent. The damage will happen.

Of course stealing Satoshi's coins would not be legal. I think that's not even a question, as long as he doesn't leave some message somewhere signed with all of his keys.

I wonder if burning them would be alright or would that still be illegal. If it is illegal for any seemingly good entity to do anything with them, then they will definitely fall into the hands of some bad guys.

Also how would that thing with the proof work? You have more information?

It was proposed by Lightning inventor Tadge Dryja. I've described it here. There are ways an owner of a private key can prove that he has the key before transaction. A simple example is posting a TXID of a transaction to the blockchain without posting the transaction, and then post the transaction some blocks later. A quantum hacker can't do that if he doesn't know the public key to derive the private key from via Shor's algorithm.

Very interesting and it doesn't even seem so complicated! I expected something very difficult. I'll read into it, thank you.

if there will be any threats it wont be for a long time. we have at least another 20 years when the last bit coin will be.mined imo.

You didn't even read anything lol.

You are thoughtful about these points, and all the points are vital, even though some are more vital than others. My conclusion is that many of these threats or supposed threats are not just happening, some have started years back, and Bitcoin has been standing unaffected, and it will continue to do that. In this world we are in, there's nothing perfect (pros and cons), and there is nothing without an antagonist. It is about Bitcoin resilience and the commitment of the developers, protectors and adopters that will determine a lot. The government, technical, social/religious etc. will try, but I know that Bitcoin will alwasy survive.

Unaffected? What a joke. Many of these things have negatively impacted Bitcoin already. Your last sentence is also a lie, you absolutely can not know that Bitcoin will survive. It is not something that is knowable.

Is there a factual case where companies that own a lot of coins influence how miners prioritize transactions or how updates get pushed? I can't recall any big controversy other than the concentration of supply as of now. I believe miners' concentration on some countries also happened way before Strategy or other companies bought tons of Bitcoin, too. It will be interesting to see how the community will handle that if such things happen. If those players are here for the profit, I find it hard to believe they'll use such a destructive strategy after pouring millions to buy BTC.

I can't believe the things I am reading. Companies and miners together colluded in many attempts during the segwit and fork drama. They tried to push their will on the network several times. Also in recent years there have been cases of certain miners censoring some transactions. Why would there not be? If the USA government comes at your door you do as you are told. The world we live in is not a superhero movie.

[d5000]

Would that really be so good? I mean we would radically be changing from a chain with complete history to one that only has partial history and traceability even if all UTXOs are verified. I have seen some of this stuff in the altcoin world and I don't like it. Most nodes there don't have the full history and the archival nodes are insane servers at AWS or something. They call this decentralized and scalable lol.

If all UTXOs can be verified this way, without gaps e.g. due to unconventional scripts and even in the case of a large reorg, and a minimal history (e.g. all block headers and perhaps also parts of the merkle trees) are still saved, then I see no problem with that scenario. It would align with the idea that Bitcoin is a strictly financial tool and not a "data storage".

The mini blockchain scheme is a bit austere though. I think something in between between mini-blockchain and the current "storing everything" model would be ideal.

I wonder if burning them would be alright or would that still be illegal. If it is illegal for any seemingly good entity to do anything with them, then they will definitely fall into the hands of some bad guys.

This is indeed an interesting question.

It could be tried to block P2PK/P2MS transactions like Satoshi's mining txes until a recovery mechanism is found. But there is probably no possible recovery mechanism like the one I mentioned for these coins, the problem is that a quantum hacker can always compute the private key of a P2PK transaction, and so he can provide the proof (like the TXID in Tadge Dryja's simplest model). Another idea was to require a proof about a HD key seed but that of course doesn't help here too.

Only way I can imagine now would be to discover a transaction to one of Satoshi's addresses with is P2PKH, not P2PK, and to a not reused address. Of course there must be evidence that that this address belongs to Satoshi (and not e.g. Craig Wright lol). Then they could establish a "lex Satoshi" rule, where all transactions have to be co-signed with Satoshi's P2PKH address too.

There is also another interesting question: what happens if a hacker steals Satoshi's coins but Satoshi does not initiate a demand nor claims the coins?

Of course the Bitcoin community could demand the hacker, and exchanges and service providers could try to stop the thief with the help of chain analysis like they do now when an exchange is hacked. But then? Who gets the coins back? I guess this could be a similar case than somebody who dies in absolute solitude without any heir. Would then some government be able to claim the coins (e.g. the one which confiscated the stolen coins, e.g. because they were detected on an exchange of that country)? Or could the quantum hacker indeed say there is "no owner", as nobody claimed them?

[Dogedegen]

Would that really be so good? I mean we would radically be changing from a chain with complete history to one that only has partial history and traceability even if all UTXOs are verified. I have seen some of this stuff in the altcoin world and I don't like it. Most nodes there don't have the full history and the archival nodes are insane servers at AWS or something. They call this decentralized and scalable lol.

If all UTXOs can be verified this way, without gaps e.g. due to unconventional scripts and even in the case of a large reorg, and a minimal history (e.g. all block headers and perhaps also parts of the merkle trees) are still saved, then I see no problem with that scenario. It would align with the idea that Bitcoin is a strictly financial tool and not a "data storage".

The mini blockchain scheme is a bit austere though. I think something in between between mini-blockchain and the current "storing everything" model would be ideal.

It does work in the sense that it verifies the outputs, but it loses the traceability of coins for better or worse. I don't also know how regulators would like this. In topics like tainted coins and stuff like that, would it not be harder to trace if history was not available? It will be interesting to see how this develops.

I wonder if burning them would be alright or would that still be illegal. If it is illegal for any seemingly good entity to do anything with them, then they will definitely fall into the hands of some bad guys.

This is indeed an interesting question.

It could be tried to block P2PK/P2MS transactions like Satoshi's mining txes until a recovery mechanism is found. But there is probably no possible recovery mechanism like the one I mentioned for these coins, the problem is that a quantum hacker can always compute the private key of a P2PK transaction, and so he can provide the proof (like the TXID in Tadge Dryja's simplest model). Another idea was to require a proof about a HD key seed but that of course doesn't help here too.

Only way I can imagine now would be to discover a transaction to one of Satoshi's addresses with is P2PKH, not P2PK, and to a not reused address. Of course there must be evidence that that this address belongs to Satoshi (and not e.g. Craig Wright lol). Then they could establish a "lex Satoshi" rule, where all transactions have to be co-signed with Satoshi's P2PKH address too.

There is also another interesting question: what happens if a hacker steals Satoshi's coins but Satoshi does not initiate a demand nor claims the coins?

Of course the Bitcoin community could demand the hacker, and exchanges and service providers could try to stop the thief with the help of chain analysis like they do now when an exchange is hacked. But then? Who gets the coins back? I guess this could be a similar case than somebody who dies in absolute solitude without any heir. Would then some government be able to claim the coins (e.g. the one which confiscated the stolen coins, e.g. because they were detected on an exchange of that country)? Or could the quantum hacker indeed say there is "no owner", as nobody claimed them?

This is one of the questions that makes this situation difficult. Satoshi's pile of coins is huge and they can't be verified using the method that you have provided, or well any method (excluding what you wrote there and similar indirect things) if quantum computers can get those keys. Since I expect the largest corporations to be the first to have workable quantum computers, I am wondering if it would be a good solution for one of them to claim and burn them or keep them. Although I don't get what would happen if nobody ever makes a valid claim to them. I think we are in unprecedented legal territory here but I think a big corporation burning them is one of the better scenarios here.

It would avoid those proposals that want us to introduce freezing in Bitcoin which is horrible, it would avoid the dumping by bad actors and many other issues that we might have relating to this. The question is of course how do you get a large corporation on board and whether this is legal as we've discussed. As far as I am aware no large Bitcoin company is doing any serious work on quantum computers.

[EarnOnVictor]

-snip-

Unaffected? What a joke. Many of these things have negatively impacted Bitcoin already. Your last sentence is also a lie, you absolutely can not know that Bitcoin will survive. It is not something that is knowable.

You are the one that the joke should be directed at if you think Bitcoin is actually affected by all the factors and conditions that are meted out towards it. For starters, nothing is perfect, and challenges are inevitable, but is Bitcoin still thriving well despite all of these? Oh yes, I can beat my chest on that, and being in the mainstream and the price are very good points to look at.

Bitcoin is progressive, which is the ultimate here, regardless of the present and future challenges, it is holding on well. More challenges will still present themselves in the future, and I believe Bitcoin will overcome because it wasn't built under deceit, it was well structured. The foundation and modality matter, and I don't care if you see it this way!

[Dogedegen]

You are the one that the joke should be directed at if you think Bitcoin is actually affected by all the factors and conditions that are meted out towards it. For starters, nothing is perfect, and challenges are inevitable, but is Bitcoin still thriving well despite all of these? Oh yes, I can beat my chest on that, and being in the mainstream and the price are very good points to look at.

Bitcoin is progressive, which is the ultimate here, regardless of the present and future challenges, it is holding on well. More challenges will still present themselves in the future, and I believe Bitcoin will overcome because it wasn't built under deceit, it was well structured. The foundation and modality matter, and I don't care if you see it this way!

You wrote a whole pile of nothingness. It is clear that you have very little or no understanding of Bitcoin at all. Move on from this thread you are not welcome here. If something is too difficult for you like this thread it is better to ignore it like most poster's do instead of writing this meaningless post.

Bitcoin has been negatively impacted by many of these factors already. Nobody can properly estimate the total negative effect that they have had on it.

[joniboini]

I can't believe the things I am reading. Companies and miners together colluded in many attempts during the segwit and fork drama. They tried to push their will on the network several times. Also in recent years there have been cases of certain miners censoring some transactions. Why would there not be? If the USA government comes at your door you do as you are told.

I searched for a bit, and it appears that this happened before I was aware of Bitcoin. Interesting story to know. That being said, the nature of the companies in that scenario seems quite different from Strategy or other companies that bought tons of Bitcoin and publish their investment sheet. At least that's the impression I got from an article that I've read on this issue. If there's another controversial fork coming, do you think companies like the Japanese's Metaplanet will actively push miners to vote for one thing over another publicly, instead of waiting and buying more coins to anticipate a possible hard fork?