Uneasy Money: BIP-361 Wants to Freeze Satoshi's Coins. What Happens If It Passes?

Key Takeaways

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  Quantum threats challenge Bitcoin's long-standing protocol ossification

  “The thing that scares me about Bitcoin and quantum is their ecosystem and their developers, their engineers, their coordination mechanisms are not at all prepared. They've just done such hard lines in the sand over so many years, and now it's getting to the point where it's like, wait, this is actually a legitimate real threat. And apparently, they still have it in them to consider these drastic moves.”

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  BIP-361 proposes freezing unupgraded legacy Bitcoin addresses

  “This first story is BIP-361. This is pretty crazy. I feel like the Bitcoin quantum stuff has been floating around for a while and people are getting freaked out. This is the first thing that we've seen that hasn't been like, oh, we should think about it, but like we should start doing things. And Bitcoin doesn't usually do things, so this feels like a new front in the quantum Bitcoin war right now.”

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  Bitcoin shifted from software code to fundamentalist religion

  “Satoshi steps away, and different people start to take up the mantle. You get these evangelists who come in who are like super excited about Bitcoin. And it becomes somewhat religious at that point, but still software. There's still software guys doing software to it, and that's OK. But then somehow between the peak in 2011 and the first bear market, the religion of Bitcoin starts to become a thing.”

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  The fork wars solidified Bitcoin's resistance to change

  “A lot of the Bitcoiners moved to Ethereum or to at least a multi-coin point of view at that point. And then once the fork wars happened, the people that really remained in Bitcoin were the ones who were so religious. That's what solidified it. It became a matter of, 'No more. This is no longer code.' It validated their position as being correct over time as other chains died.”

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  Bitcoin's social immune system violently rejects new ideas

  “It is like really deep fundamentalist religion where certain ideas have taken a hold of the Bitcoiners. There are certain people who dominate the narrative, and they're very aggressive and quick. A lot of times people describe it as like an immune system. A new idea or a new thing comes in, and even if people don't understand what the idea is, just the idea of having ideas is shunned and rejected pretty violently.”

Episode Description

A Bitcoin developer just proposed freezing wallets that don't upgrade for quantum resistance. Including Satoshi's. Thank you to our sponsors!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Nexo Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges.  Get started at http://nexo.com/unchained Multichain Advisors MultiChain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create $50B+ in enterprise value for 80+ clients over the past 4 years. They're the partner to help navigate markets.  Build real traction today at multichainadv.com Citrea  Bitcoin’s application layer, Citrea, launched its mainnet, expanding Bitcoin’s utility to privacy, lending, BTC yields, and more. Citrea enables: cBTC: The first trust-minimized Bitcoin on a fully programmable platform. ctUSD: A native stablecoin for Bitcoin, allowing for unified liquidity. Bitcoin Capital Markets bringing demand, and utility to the Bitcoin Network. Explore the Citrea Ecosystem. A Bitcoin developer just proposed the unthinkable: freeze every wallet that does not upgrade for quantum resistance, including Satoshi's.  Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan are here to reckon with BIP-361, the quantum threat to early Bitcoin addresses, and what it means that this proposal exists at all. They also work through who actually wrote Bitcoin — Hal Finney, Adam Back, and Dave Kleiman — and a trail that runs through the Epstein files.  Plus: Justin Sun's frozen World Liberty Financial tokens expose why token holders have no legal rights, EtherFi's exit from Scroll turns into a live platform risk case study, and Circle's decision not to freeze known stolen USDC raises the question of what stablecoin issuers owe to the ecosystem. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices