Quantum hackers could one day crack old Bitcoin (BTC) wallets and forge their signatures. A new proof from quantum security startup Project Eleven gives real owners a way to take their coins back, using nothing but a seed phrase.

Not everyone can use it, though. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in June the community could freeze Satoshi Nakamoto’s coins after a quantum breakthrough. Critics called it confiscation.

Why a Bitcoin Quantum Freeze Just Got Less Scary

The freeze idea is already on paper. BIP-361, a proposal co-authored by Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp, would switch off Bitcoin’s old signature system over several years. Coins that never move would freeze forever.

Pressure grew after Washington’s quantum push put the threat on the map. Still, one objection kept coming back. A freeze takes coins away with no path back.

Project Eleven’s recent announcement attacks that weak spot. Its proof works like a receipt. It shows you own the master key behind an address without ever revealing it.

Here is the trick. A quantum computer may crack the private key of an exposed address. However, it cannot climb up to the master key, because the math there only runs one way.

Only the true owner holds that master key. So only the true owner can produce the proof, even after signatures break.

Speed makes it practical. Academics Or Sattath and Shai Wyborski floated the concept in 2023, calling it signature lifting. Lightning Labs CTO Olaoluwa Osuntokun built the first prototype. The new version runs 16 times faster, at 243 milliseconds on a laptop.

“Quantum computers can extract a private key from a public key. They cannot reverse the hashing that produced it. A wallet’s own key derivation may still provide a final, post-quantum proof of ownership,” Project Eleven stated.

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Why the Tool Cannot Save Satoshi’s Coins

The catch sits in the calendar. The proof needs BIP-32, the seed phrase system modern wallets adopted from 2012. Older wallets created every key on its own, with no master key at all.

Satoshi mined in 2009 and 2010 and left before seed phrases existed. Researcher Sergio Demian Lerner’s 2013 analysis ties roughly 1.1 million BTC to Satoshi across some 22,000 addresses.

Worse, those coins expose their public keys on-chain. That makes them the easiest quantum targets and the hardest coins to rescue.

Therefore, CZ’s idea of freezing Satoshi’s coins would still lock them away for good. BIP-361 would do the same by design.

The tool has limits too. It is unaudited, covers three older address types, and no blockchain accepts it yet.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks. Google’s quantum research cut the hardware needed for such attacks by 20 times this year. US agencies also face post-quantum cryptography deadlines by 2031.

One question now hangs over Bitcoin governance. If a freeze ever comes, the fight will not be over whether coins get frozen. It will be over which coins ever come back.

Source: BeInCrypto