tl;dr Bitcoiners have been concerned about quantum computers breaking signatures since at least 2011, but if Bitcoin adopted a post-quantum cryptography fix too early, we would have missed the potential benefits of more efficient schemestl;dr Bitcoiners have been concerned about quantum computers breaking signatures since at least 2011, but if Bitcoin adopted a post-quantum cryptography fix too early, we would have missed the potential benefits of more efficient schemes

This is a really great thread by BitMex Research (all their threads are great -- the account is run by Jonathan Bier (listen to a great recent interview with him on the Bitcoin Takeover podcast)

BitMex Research goes deep in the BitcoinTalk archives to see how Bitcoiners were talking about the threat posed by quantum computing earlier in Bitcoin's history.

They link to this thread from 2011, "What does quantum computing mean for Bitcoin?"

And BitMex finds examples of people predicting that quantum computers will break ECDSA within five years:

They quote several posts and point out how they sound very similar to the conversation today:

This thread is a great place to start if you want to dig deeper into the context in which Bitcoiners have been discussing quantum computing.