TechFlow reports that on May 3, Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, published an article stating that, following discussions in Las Vegas with multiple Bitcoin developers, researchers, and quantum computing advocates, the industry is gradually converging on partial consensus regarding the “quantum computing and Bitcoin” issue.
Thorn believes that the prevailing view supports “leaving Satoshi Nakamoto’s early P2PK address assets untouched,” as tampering with them could undermine Bitcoin’s foundational principle of inviolable property rights. He notes that Satoshi holds approximately 1.1 million BTC across roughly 22,000 addresses—not a single “super-treasury”—and that, in practice, larger-scale risks stem more from entities such as exchanges, which can proactively upgrade to quantum-resistant addresses.
He also states that the industry broadly supports proactive research into quantum-resistant cryptographic solutions for Bitcoin—including development, testing, signature compression, and protocol-level discussions—even if the ultimate goal is merely to “maintain them as a contingency reserve,” which remains valuable.
Nonetheless, Thorn cautions that aggressively pushing unproven quantum-resistant upgrades could introduce protocol complexity, fragment developer resources, and trigger community consensus deadlocks. He argues that even if quantum computing poses only an extremely low-probability threat to Bitcoin, initiating discussions and building technical reserves in advance remains worthwhile.
