What should be done about Satoshi's coins when ECC is broken? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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What should be done about Satoshi's coins when ECC is broken?

2741 sats \ 60k boost \ 48 comments \ @anon 11 Apr bitcoin

zaps forwarded to @koob (50%) @ek (50%)

At some point, elliptic curve cryptography will be broken, and it will be possible for an attacker to derive the private key from any P2PK wallet (such as Satoshi's).

Assuming BTC in these wallets doesn't move before that time, what should be done about these coins?

Nothing, let the attacker have them51.3%

Hard fork, burn them18.4%

Hard fork, air drop them to hodlers1.3%

Hard fork, send them to mining pool7.9%

Soft fork, disallow P2PK txns in mempool14.5%

Something else6.6%

76 votes \ poll ended

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219 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek fwd 11 Apr

As far as I know, we don't even know for sure if "Satoshi's coins" are Satoshi's coins.

So I'm not sure we should treat them any differently from other P2PK coins.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @krawall 21h

That's really the correct answer here... Nothing to be known for sure, nothing to be done. A person is responsible for their keys.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @_Bubble_2009 18h

Let's say that if Satoshi Nakamoto is a real cypherpunk, he will leave those coins where they are without ever touching them.

Those coins were generated at the dawn of the protocol, to run the system.

If Nakamoto used those coins, part of the ideology behind Bitcoin would collapse.

125 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 11 Apr

Something Else:

SOFT FORK - P2PK TXNS MUST PAY 50% MINING FEE.

This sort of splits the difference between "let them have them" and "air drop to miners"

Regardless of whats done, we would need to give holders at least 4 years advance notice before enacting anything.

142 sats \ 0 replies \ @endothermicdev 12 Apr

Literally pay a mining fee? Because then once you brute force a private key you just buy some mining hardware and sit on the tx until you can mine a single block, right?

131 sats \ 0 replies \ @endothermicdev 12 Apr

Czar of the universe answer is to fix this in an elegant way early with a decade or so to move the coins before anything consequential happened. In the real world, you would never build consensus for such a thing. Even if you did, the process would be so contentious that a vocal contingent could cause a substantial loss of faith in the immutability of bitcoin. It might even be preferable to let the chaos play out. Unless there's overwhelming consensus, any solution becomes a poisoned chalice - even if it's technically elegant.

92 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 11 Apr

@anon really a believer in the "pay-to-post" meme here.

No post rewards coz anon, boosting 60k sats and forwarding all rewards to SN devs.

121 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 12 Apr

funny that he fw the CCs to a non-account @koob is not @k00b

193 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 11 Apr

What the NSA does what their coins is none of your business

38 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 12 Apr

hahahaha good point !

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @quark 11 Apr

The coins will probably be moved before the cryptography vulnerability is announced. They would secretly get the coins before anything else. To prevent this, I think there was and idea about a hard fork requiring coin holders to renew them periodically (could be years) to avoid losing the coins. This would burn Satoshi's coins and lost coins, giving a better representation of the total available supply.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @_stacktoshi 11 Apr

Sounds horrible. I want to stick my seedphrase in a time capsule for my great-great-great-great-great grandchildren to discover one day.

34 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 21 Apr

I’m surprised that the majority is voting for letting the attacker have the coins. What’s the benefit of letting some QC pioneer have several million bitcoin?

If the choice were between the coins being misappropriated or burned, wouldn’t you rather have your coins be lost than a thief benefiting?

29 sats \ 1 reply \ @Cje95 11 Apr

Hell of a question…. The hard fork sending them to mining pool would be very very interesting… anyone have a rough idea how much longer mining BTC rewards would go for then?

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 11 Apr

That would depend entirely on what the new mining schedule is. It could be as extreme as putting all the old BTC into the next block reward or they could scale up all of the remaining rewards or they could stretch out the decay schedule or any number of other things.

I would be curious to hear what the leading proposals are, though.

2757 sats \ 3 replies \ @raw_avocado 21 Apr

1st of all we can't really tell which coins belong to Satoshi precisely. The best heuristic is the Patoshi pattern, but even that has certain caveats.

And even more I just don't understand where this attitude is coming from that a lot of people get to have a say in how someone moves their money? It does not matter if it is Satoshi, or anyone else, it's not your money!

Let's say that Satoshi emerges and provides some kind of 0-doubt cryptographic proofs that he owns a BIG amount of coins and he says he is ok with confiscating these coins, it's still not a good idea. (i know that in this hypothetical, the better thing would be to move the coins to some quantum proof addresses, but im trying to make a point here :p)

Why? Well because this creates a bad precedent where you practically confiscated someones BTC and they you censored them for life.

Also just because coins don't move "before that time", don't really mean anything, except that the coins did not move. Maybe I am missing something but I don't see how any educated conclusion can be drawn from that.

Let's say we find(and i am sure there are such cases) some coins that are all up for grabs but can only be grabbed after block XXX,XXX, do we fork these coins off also? Ofc, no.

But Satoshi's coins are a big quantity, you don't want them in the wrong hands.

If what makes this action justifiable is the amount of the coins, then where do you draw the line? I mean I struggle to come up with a logical answer even for the sake of the argument.
There is no such thing as wrong hands, because there are no hands, just keys that sign TXs. The whole point of having a blockchain is to eliminate any sort of intention that can not be expressed in a script.

Is it even correct to call this an attack? I mean from the POV of the network things are just functioning as usual. How could you tell the Bitcoin Network that this is something incorrect?

This is not a problem of the Bitcoin Network not being good at dealing with Quantum Computers, but a problem of Meat Space Intentions vs Blockchain Intentions.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Murch 21 Apr

Isn’t there a distinction to be made between coins being confiscated and coins being burned?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @raw_avocado 22 Apr

You are very correct to point out that there is a distinction between confiscating and burning the coins; however, I don't think that changes any of my arguments.

But I will say this: if I confiscate or burn your shoes, you will end up barefoot in the same way.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 4h

Given that the main difference I’m pointing out is about whether the instigator benefits, I think your example makes my point exactly: either way you are out of your coins, but it adds insult to injury if someone else undeservedly gains them.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @tidwell 9h

we will be discussing this at TABConf this year in Oct for those who seriously want to debate and discuss this in person. tabconf.com

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kurszusz 11 Apr

This can't happen except with the creation of a quantum computer... and that's a long way off. The solution (I think) will be to switch from sha256 to sha512 (or maybe sha1024)

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @quark 11 Apr

You are probably underestimating the advances in quantum computers. They are already doing prime factorization algorithms and evolving fast. We may need to change the cryptography sooner than expected.

8 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 20 Apr

All you people care about is money, its not about the money its about sending a message, everything burns

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitSapien 12 Apr

Timelock it to be distributed as mining rewards after 2140 ? does that work ?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 12 Apr

Let Satoshi decide. They're his coins.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 12 Apr

SELL ALL YOUR BITCOIN NOW ! WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE!

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 11 Apr

I feel some people hve a lot of time to daydream. The system wont be broken anytime soon.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @stacks 20 Apr

The only answer that respects the foundational principles of Bitcoin is to do nothing. The owner of the coins in all P2PK addresses need to make their own decisions.

That being said, if (that is a big IF) there was a way that makes sense that would sort of recycle these coins into a perpetual block subsidy of some sort, it might be interesting. But then again, I see no way of doing that without violating someone else’s property right.

Interesting debate though. At the end, Bitcoin should be something where you could go to sleep for 25 years and when you wake up, nothing fundamental has changed except that your coins are worth more.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @metadavid 6h

Is this really a problem? I thought there was already talks about a quantum-resistant fork to upgrade the signature scheme?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @piecover 10h

Nothing, it will not break

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Dkryptoenth 21h

I thinkredistributing it into random wallets would make sense instead of a cold wallet.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @000w2 23h

All of the above. The market will decide which fork is Bitcoin

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0291597e6b 21 Apr freebie

cool

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @whiteyfrauds 21 Apr

spend it all on hookers and blow

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Sirkay 20 Apr

The hacker have it

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @025738dda8 20 Apr

Nobody knows which coins exactly are owned by Satoshi and which are owned by somebody else. So what soft/hard fork could we talk about...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @_Bubble_2009 20 Apr

When quantum computer will be ready, All out found could be stolen.

Satoshi wallet will be more interesting then mine wallet, so, probably, it will be broke for first. When this will happen, I'll will ready to move all my asset to a quantum resistant wallet.

I've heard Abam Back talk about this few days ago.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lazy_AMA 14 Apr

Soft fork, disallow P2PK txns in mempool

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Dkryptoenth 14 Apr

Hard Fork, send them to mining pool.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fd055dcc2f 13 Apr freebie

when the time comes all utxos will have to be moved to new-format addresses (like bc5xxxx something)

grace period of 7-10 years, and those that are not moved are locked and lost. what's there to think about?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @JesseJames 12 Apr

call 1-800-FED and ask ...lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satoshi__Nakamoto 12 Apr

Send them to minimg pool

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Dkryptoenth 12 Apr

But guys what's up with ECC?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @HardMoney 12 Apr

It’s not like the quantum miner gets 1M coins all at once. This attack would be 50 utxos at a time. It’s like a new mining award for the network

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Murch 2h

It’s not. How do quantum computers benefit the Bitcoin network? Why should Bitcoin subsidize development of quantum computers?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @_stacktoshi 11 Apr

I kinda like the soft fork idea. It's a reversible countermeasure to protecting Satoshi's coins. But not the end of the world if we do nothing. Odds are that the attacker will be some entity that's already really wealthy, if they're one of the first to get their hands on a powerful enough quantum computer. Perhaps some billionaire will steal them and then burn them. One can dream.

Oh, what happens next? Do exchanges allow these coins to be sold for fiat? Do reputable institutions do business with this entity and keep it the DL?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BITC0IN 11 Apr

Depends

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Nzowashua 21 Apr outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.