A leading Bitcoin developer said he would prefer to see the estimated 5.6 million bitcoins. He believes the network is lost frozen and risks falling into the hands of future quantum hackers.
Jameson Lopp told CoinDesk that while he doesn’t want to freeze anyone’s bitcoins, removing dormant tokens from possible circulation may be safer for the network.
“At the moment, I don’t think any of this is necessary,” Lopp said in an interview, emphasizing that he is thinking “adversely about a possible future threat.” Still, “I would prefer that lost or inactive coins remain out of the reach of an attacker rather than 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, invalidating transactions from vulnerable quantum wallets, potentially freezing assets that don’t migrate. At current prices, the dormant tokens Lopp references are worth approximately $420 billion.
In a subsequent post on “I wrote it because I like the alternative even less,” he wrote, adding that in the face of an existential threat, “individual economic incentives trump philosophical principles.”
This is not the first time Lopp has expressed his feelings about quantum recovery, which he says 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 on the system.”
Millions of bitcoins likely lost forever
About 28% of all bitcoin, or about 5.6 million tokens, has not moved in more than a decade, Lopp said, adding that he and other analysts believe it is likely lost. If it ever recovers thanks to advances in quantum computing, that amount could introduce significant volatility and undermine trust in the original crypto network, Lopp added.
While the proposal is still in its early stages and no timeline has been set for its adoption, it has already sparked intense debate within the community.
Lopp formulated the idea as a way to encourage or even pressure others to upgrade their wallets before a real threat arises.
“It’s not that I want to freeze anyone’s bitcoins,” he said. “We believe it will be necessary to incentivize ecosystem improvement because humans tend to procrastinate.”
Any changes would require consensus across the decentralized network. While no formal vote is being held on the matter, similar updates have required overwhelming support from miners in the past to activate.
Read more: To freeze or not to freeze: Satoshi and the $440 billion in bitcoins threatened by quantum computing
Risk of mass panic in the market
The biggest risks include loss of confidence in the largest cryptocurrency, Lopp said. While a sudden dump of millions of bitcoins onto the market could cause wild price swings, he said the biggest danger lies in perception.
“It doesn’t even require a massive market crash,” Lopp said. “If there is any credible evidence that someone has the ability to recover lost or vulnerable coins with a quantum computer, massive market panic should be expected immediately.”
In that scenario, he said, rational holders would likely exit the system until there is confidence that the blockchain has been protected against such threats.
The result is a growing divide within the community, pitting Bitcoin’s long-held promise of immutable, censorship-resistant ownership against the need to defend the network from a potential future shock.
Deviation from Bitcoin 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 inactive bitcoin accounts would mark a significant departure from the fundamental principles of Bitcoin.
“On the one hand, freezing dormant or exposed coins could eliminate significant tail risk and protect market confidence,” Greenspan said. “On the other hand, it introduces a precedent for intervention that many would say is more dangerous than the threat itself.”
Greenspan explained that even without a large-scale liquidation, visible quantum attacks on inactive wallets could cause market-wide panic.
Others argue that freezing inactive BTC accounts risks undermining Bitcoin’s fundamental guarantees.
“Ownership becomes conditional. Having keys no longer guarantees that you can spend,” said Leo Fan, founder of Cysic and former quantum resilience lead at Algorand. “That weakens Bitcoin’s ‘unstoppable money’ promise.”
And while he doesn’t agree with freezing accounts, Fan noted that removing millions of bitcoins from circulation could restrict supply, potentially increasing their value.
