A general purpose and stable high qubit quantum computer (which doesn't exist and no one is sure if will ever exist) can run an algorithm called shor's. Shor's is used to factor numbers. You can thus use shor's to derive a private key from a public key. Bitcoin exposes public keys in the scenarios of certain address reuse and when certain transactions are sitting in the mempool, as well as very old 2009 era pay to pubkey coinbases and new taproot transactions. What will happen if such a computer ever exists is slowly attempts to mine the most static of these coins, probably the old coinbases, will occur. Once this happens everyone will know there is a quantum actor and avoid address reuse or in the worst case just move to a new address format. It's also important to remember that a quantum attack takes considerable time, not dissimilar to mining, as it's the process for searching for a private key. Another Algorithm, called grovers, will enable a new kind of mining ASIC, similar to how generations of PoW devices have always functioned.
This is the anti-quantum-fud blurp we have set up in this Bitcoin discord server I'm in.
Very old 2009 pay to pubkey coinbase would include Satoshis coins wouldn't it?
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98 sats \ 1 reply \ @jgbtc 13 Oct
Maybe Satoshi's coins are a bounty for quantum researchers and this was his plan all along. He wanted quantum computers for the many great benefits it will bring to humanity. Bitcoin could have been his way to incentivize/reward the achievement.
Possibly he knew he wasn't going to be around much longer and this was the best way he could think of to make quantum computers a reality after he was gone and therefore unable participate directly in research.
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IDK... Leaving up to 3-4 million bitcoin to the first quantum computers seems like a bit too much for anyone to stomach.
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