A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal gaining traction this week would freeze a swath of dormant Bitcoin wallets to protect them from quantum computers, including the estimated 1.1 million BTC sitting in addresses attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. BIP-361, proposed by cypherpunk Jameson Lopp and other Bitcoin developers, targets early wallets from the 2010, 2011 era that exposed their public keys through now-deprecated Pay-to-PubKey (P2PK) transactions. At current prices, Satoshi’s holdings alone clock in at $74 billion.
Why BIP-361 Exists
The proposal is a soft fork, meaning it wouldn’t split the chain but would require miner and node consensus. The core issue: sufficiently powerful quantum computers could derive a private key from an exposed public key, letting an attacker drain any wallet that used the old address format. Most modern wallets use Pay-to-PubKey-Hash (P2PKH) or SegWit addresses, which don’t reveal the public key until funds are spent. Early Bitcoin, however, ran on P2PK. Satoshi’s wallets, along with thousands of other dormant OG addresses, fit that profile.
BIP-361 proposes a phased rollout. Wallets and exchanges would be pushed to upgrade to quantum-resistant cryptography. Eventually, if those old addresses remain untouched, the protocol would disable them entirely, rendering the coins unspendable. It’s a preemptive lockdown, not a confiscation. The coins stay where they are; they just can’t move.
Satoshi’s Stack and the Broader Stake
Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC isn’t the only treasure at risk. Thousands of wallets from Bitcoin’s earliest days remain dormant. Some belong to lost or deceased users. Others are simply forgotten. A subset could be resurrection candidates if quantum attacks become feasible in the next decade. The developers behind BIP-361 argue that freezing vulnerable addresses is less damaging than letting quantum-capable adversaries drain them in a coordinated heist. That scenario, if it played out, would crater confidence and potentially destabilize the entire network.
No timeline for implementation has been set. BIP-361 is a proposal, not a protocol change. It will need broad community support, miners, node operators, wallet providers, and exchanges, to activate. Given Bitcoin’s famously contentious governance, that’s a high bar. The debate will center on whether locking coins without owner consent crosses a line, even if those owners appear to have vanished. For now, the conversation is open. The quantum clock, meanwhile, keeps ticking.
