2025-11-15 –, English Stage Language: English
Quantum computers pose an existential threat to Bitcoin's cryptographic foundations, with millions of bitcoins currently vulnerable to attack. This talk examines Bitcoin's specific quantum vulnerabilities - from Satoshi's exposed P2PK coins to Taproot's quantum-vulnerable key paths - and explores BIP-360's "Pay to Quantum Resistant Hash" as an immediate defense. We'll analyze how P2QRH removes public key exposure while preserving Bitcoin's functionality, why this approach provides crucial protection before full post-quantum signatures arrive, and the implementation path forward.
Bitcoin's security assumes that deriving private keys from public keys is computationally impossible. Quantum computers running Shor's algorithm threaten to shatter this foundation, but the threat isn't uniform across Bitcoin's architecture.
We'll systematically examine Bitcoin's quantum attack surface: P2PK outputs with permanently exposed public keys, Taproot addresses that encode keys directly, and growing vulnerability from address reuse. The key insight: "long-exposure" attacks against visible keys require less powerful quantum computers than "short-exposure" attacks against mempool transactions.
BIP-360 addresses the immediate threat through engineering elegance: P2QRH outputs provide all of Taproot's advanced scripting while removing the quantum-vulnerable key path spend. We'll examine how this works - committing to script tree hashes instead of public keys, maintaining full tapscript compatibility, and providing immediate protection against long-exposure attacks.
The technical analysis covers implementation: how P2QRH fits into Bitcoin's SegWit architecture, activation challenges, and why this two-phase approach (quantum-resistant outputs now, post-quantum signatures later) offers the safest upgrade path. We'll conclude with timeline urgency and required ecosystem coordination.
Physicist, Software Engineer and Entrepreneur building with freedom tech.
Bitcoin, Nostr and AI.
I speak spanish, english and french, let's share Cypherpunk ideas.