a16z: Slow Upgrades and Massive Dormant Tokens Expose BTC to Greater Quantum Threat

BlockBeats News, December 7th, a16z stated in its latest article on quantum attacks that Bitcoin is facing the challenge of two major real-world problems, making it urgent to transition to post-quantum digital signatures.

The first is the governance efficiency issue, as Bitcoin's upgrade process is extremely slow. If the community cannot reach a consensus on the solution, any contentious issue could trigger a disruptive hard fork. The second is the proactiveness of migration issue, as the transition of Bitcoin to post-quantum signatures cannot be completed passively; holders must actively migrate their assets. This means that a large amount of dormant, quantum-vulnerable coins will lose protection.

It is estimated that the number of such quantum-vulnerable and potentially abandoned bitcoins could reach millions, with a calculated market value of up to hundreds of billions of dollars.