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Comment by reidjs | Hacker News Reader

Sure, quantum computing may break BTC encryption. Accepting that premise, it will also break every other secure form of encryption we currently have. In that scenario, there are much, much more important things to worry about than your little Bitcoin wallet.

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Other things can adapt but how does bitcoin adapt? Or are people willing to just give up all the old coins as if nothing happened?

The same way those things adapted. There will be whitepapers and code and the changes will be adopted quickly.

Just like every other existential threat to bitcoin QC will threaten other more important things, like infrastructure, first.

It's a non-threat.

What sort of change could happen that would prevent someone from taking all the bitcoin lost or just sitting around?

It seems like the only options is to either just let it happen or make those bitcoins disappear.

Yeah, I'm unclear on this also - there would have to be a flag day before which you can prove ownership and then move your coins to a new system. It doesn't work if QC that can easily break the keys arrives first, without warning.

You do not understand the situation. Breaking ECDSA would mean everyone gains access to everyone else's private keys. There is no recovery after that, because even if the network is updated to use a quantum-resistant scheme, how do you prove you're the owner of that BTC? And without a central party, who decides you're the rightful owner of your BTC, if 10's of other people insist they own it?

If the quantum resistant scheme is set up long before it is necessary, people could have plenty of time to transfer their coins from quantum-vulnerable addresses to quantum-resistant addresses,

And then the community could decide “if you didn’t update your addresses before quantum computer attacks were viable, even though you had 5 years to do it with strong evidence that it would be necessary eventually, and lost your coins as a result, then sucks to be you”

Somebody only read the title.

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