I’m excited to share that the BIP 360 team has completed a major update, reflecting months of work to make the proposal clearer, more readable, and more accessible to the entire Bitcoin community.

We have been working on a clean rewrite of the BIP, led by our new coauthor Isabel Foxen Duke. Our goal was to present the proposal’s motivation, rationale, and technical details in a way that is readable by developers, cryptographers, and non-technical bitcoiners interested in quantum-resistance strategies for Bitcoin.

We also felt the BIP deserved certain linguistic clarifications in light of the substantive technical changes made by coauthor Ethan Heilman earlier this year.

At its core, the BIP introduces a new Bitcoin output type that is both Tapscript-supportive and resistant to hypothetical long-exposure attacks on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). We have renamed this output type Pay-to-Tapscript-Hash (P2TSH) to reflect its construction more clearly.

Additionally, we’re working on follow-up proposals to introduce post-quantum signature schemes that may protect Bitcoin addresses from short-exposure attacks (that is, attacks on public keys while a transaction is in the mempool). P2TSH addresses will be well suited to integrate these signature schemes, laying the technical groundwork for future post-quantum signatures schemes in Bitcoin.

WHAT’S NEW WITH BIP 360

• We brought in Isabel Foxen Duke as our third coauthor to ensure the fullest clarity and to present the proposal’s motivation, rationale, and technical details as readably as possible.

• The proposed output type is now called Pay-to-Tapscript-Hash (P2TSH).

• P2TSH is Tapscript-supportive and removes the quantum-vulnerable keypath spend.

• The new output type lays the technical groundwork for future post-quantum signature schemes.

• We are developing quantum-resistant signature schemes and plan to introduce them in future proposals to protect Bitcoin from short-exposure quantum attacks.

• P2TSH will enable wallet optionality at spend time allowing Bitcoin users the choice of ECC as usual or ECC+PQC hybrid cryptography (so there is never a reduction in security)

• BIP 360 now includes complete test vectors in Python and Rust.

For a deeper look at what’s new with our proposal, visit BIP360.org

I want to thank everyone who takes the time to read, review, comment, and contribute. In particular, I’m grateful to everyone who’s participated on the Bitcoin BIPs repo on GitHub. I’m truly appreciative of all the time that Jon Atack, Murch, D++, Ava Chow, and many others have put into this so far. I’m particularly proud of how many amazing female contributors we’ve had so far, and we need to continue to encourage their contributions in our community.

I’m looking forward to reviewing all thoughts on the new work. This is the foundational critical work needed to make sure that Bitcoin is prepared for the future and our chance to address the quantum FUD once and for all.

While we still have many more challenges ahead, we believe BIP 360 is the next right action, paving the way towards a robust, multi-proposal quantum mitigation strategy for Bitcoin.

It’s also worth noting that today just so happens to be the 1 year anniversary of BIP 360 getting its BIP number courtesy of Jon Atack.

Thank you for your time,

Hunter

In the last month, the quantum threat officially became a human rights matter, the first ever live demo of BIP 360 at TABConf showed a real implementation of this BIP, and new breakthroughs that pushed the boundaries of what quantum hardware can do...including Quantinuum’s new quantum computer with 48 error-corrected logical qubits, and thoughts on Trezor’s new quantum-resistant wallet features.

Let’s dive in!

BITCOIN QUANTUM HIGHLIGHTS

• Human Rights Foundation’s report on the quantum threat to Bitcoin

• Quantinuum unveils first QC with 48 error-corrected logical qubits

• Trezor adds “quantum readiness”

• First live SLH-DSA transactions at TABConf

• CryptoSnake interview with Hunter Beast: the quantum threat explained

• Bitcoin Rails episode with Martin Shkreli: Hacking Satoshi’s coins

• Quantum computers cross 6,000 qubit mark

• NVIDIA launches NVQLink for hybrid quantum-AI systems

• Google’s Willow chip shows verifiable quantum advantage

• Harvard runs a quantum computer for two hours straight

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The Quantum Threat is Now a Human Rights Issue

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) published a report framing the quantum threat to Bitcoin as a human rights matter. It warns what we already know: Millions of coins could be liquidated once quantum computers break ECC, but with a twist.

They argue that Bitcoin is a tool used by dissidents, activists and independent journalists to receive support, safeguard savings and transact outside dictatorial controls.

Failing to upgrade Bitcoin before a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) appears would mean:

• Secure donations get exposed.

• Private savings get compromised.

• Uncensored transactions get stopped.

So in this situation, people under repression risk losing way more than just coins.

The report highlights BIP 360 as a “signature‐scheme agnostic proposal that makes Taproot addresses quantum-resistant and provides a flexible framework for future post-quantum algorithms via a soft-fork.”

They also underline Hourglass as the only viable proposal to date being considered by the community for P2PK coins, beside burning and doing nothing.

Here’s an Anduro X thread that summaries the report:

You can also read the full HRF report for more detailed information.

Quantinuum Launches Quantum Computer with 48 Error-Corrected Logical Qubits

Dubbed Helios, Quantimuum launched a trapped-ion quantum computer built on its Quantum Charge-Coupled Device (QCCD) architecture and manufactured by defense contractor, Honeywell.

The system operates with 98 physical qubits and demonstrates 48 error-corrected logical qubits with 99.99 % state-preparation and measurement fidelity.

The near 50 % logical-to-physical ratio is achieved through efficient qubit reuse and overlapping error-correction cycles, allowing the same ions to support multiple logical operations without requiring hundreds of physical qubits per logical one (like in other quantum systems).

They also announced:

• A real-time control engine for hybrid quantum-classical programming.

• Guppy, a Python-based language for mixed workloads.

• Integration with NVIDIA NVQLink and CUDA-Q for future real-time error correction.

• Partnerships with Amgen, BMW Group, JPMorganChase, and SoftBank Corp.

Because trapped-ion quantum computers prioritize fidelity and coherence over speed, they could only sustain long-exposure attacks, not the short-exposure attacks that require faster gate operations. Read the full release

Trezor Adds Quantum Readiness

Trezor launched its Safe 7 wallet and called it “quantum-ready.”

This means it can receive future post-quantum updates once standards are finalized. It does not make the wallet fully quantum resistant, as for that to be true, Bitcoin should also be secured.

Read more: Trezor Guide

BIP 360 Live at TABConf

Quantum took center stage at this year’s TABConf.

Hunter Beast and the Anduro team showed the first working SLH-DSA transactions to Pay to Tapscript Hash addresses on Signet.

TABConf hosted eight sessions on quantum computing, signaling that Bitcoin developers are taking the threat seriously as quantum progress advances.

Michael Casey summed it up like this:

“The Bitcoin Interface team attended leading Bitcoin technical conference TABConf last week, which was quantum-resistance themed this year, validating a strong quantum focus at the protocol level. Three MARA team members were highlighted as key speakers: Hunter Beast, Isabel Foxen Duke and Mike Casey.”

Hunter Beast on CryptoSnake

Hunter joined CryptoSnake to explain how quantum computers could soon threaten Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve cryptography.

He traced the problem to early defense research and showed how new qubit designs are moving closer to running Shor’s algorithm.

He explained the difference between long-exposure and short-exposure attacks: Satoshi-era coins and reused addresses are most at risk, while SegWit and hashed outputs remain safe until spent.

Projects like Project 11 estimate that over 6.7 million bitcoin are vulnerable.

BIP 360 removes elliptic-curve spending paths and replaces them with hash-based scripts, introducing addresses that start with bc1z.

Martin Shkreli on Bitcoin Rails

Martin Shkreli joined Isabel Foxen Duke on Bitcoin Rails to talk about how he’s raising funds to hack Satoshi’s coins.

Shkreli described two possible attack paths: quantum computing and AI-driven math.

The conversation covered why hacking Bitcoin would be the “ultimate mathematical achievement,” why quantum may pose a bigger risk to Bitcoin than to traditional tech, and why a real exploit would be unlike anything the network has faced before.

Quantum Computing Keeps Evolving

► 6,000 Qubit Milestone
Caltech physicists announced that quantum computers have surpassed 6,000 qubits with 99.98 percent accuracy. “Qubits aren’t useful without quality. Now we have both,” said researcher Gyohei Nomura. Read more

► NVIDIA NVQLink
NVIDIA announced NVQLink, an architecture that connects quantum processors with supercomputers and AI systems. The U.S. Department of Energy will use it to build hybrid quantum-classical machines for materials and chemistry research. Read more

► Google Willow
Google’s Willow chip achieved a verifiable quantum advantage. The new “Quantum Echoes” algorithm ran 13,000 times faster than classical methods, showing reproducible results across systems. Read more

► Harvard Breakthrough
Researchers at Harvard and MIT kept a quantum computer running for two hours straight by replenishing qubits as they decayed. The team believes fully continuous quantum operation could arrive within two to three years. Read more

Final Thoughts

Bitcoin’s path to quantum resistance is getting clearer. BIP 360 and other post-quantum efforts are building the framework for Bitcoin’s long-term resistance, while the subject keeps getting more and more traction in the space, as seen in TABConf.

But timelines matter. Quantum progress is accelerating, and coordination is key. We still have enough time to act.

Remember: Be prepared, not scared.

The past two months have been packed with milestones on the quantum front.

Real progress is being made: From the first BIP 360 transaction broadcasted on Signet, to new alliances digging deeper into post-quantum signature algorithms.

At the same time, the risks feel sharper than ever. Project 11’s latest numbers show that more than 6M bitcoin are at stake, while billion-dollar companies are teaming up to push the boundaries of what quantum computers can do.

Let’s get right into it:

BITCOIN QUANTUM HIGHLIGHTS | AUGUST & SEPTEMBER

• First BIP 360 transaction broadcasted on Signet

• Hunter Beast and Ethan Heilman are now working with anon cryptographer, Conduition, to review post-quantum signature algorithms

• Bitcoin++ Istanbul Recap: Bitcoin needs to change

• IBM and AMD’s partnership to boost quantum computer capabilities

• Qafray Vaults: A Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin Ownership Proof Mechanism

• Bitcoin Rails interview with Jameson Lopp: Quantum Computing and the Future of Satoshi’s Coins

• Project 11 released updated list of quantum-vulnerable addresses: More than 6M bitcoin risk

First Ever BIP 360 Transaction on Signet

On Bitcoin’s Signet, Hunter successfully broadcasted the first ever BIP 360 transaction.

Some say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is:

The transaction is demonstrating the latest updates to the BIP, including the switch to SegWit v2 and Pay-to-Tapscript-Hash (P2TSH).

The script shows OP_PUSHNUM_2 and a 32-byte quantum-resistant hash, embedded in a Taproot-style V2_P2TSH output.

Hunter is working on a full in depth explanation of this, so stay tuned for future posts!

A New Alliance for Bitcoin’s Quantum Resistance

Annon cryptographer, Conduition, is now working alongside Ethan Heilman and Hunter Beast to review post-quantum signature algorithms.

Their efforts are centered on testing lattice-based and hash-based schemes approved by NIST standards, such as SLH-DSA (SPHINCS+).

The final goal is to come up with a proposal that brings post-quantum signatures to Bitcoin, and that in tandem with proposals like BIP 360 or QBIP, lay the groundwork for making Bitcoin fully quantum-resistant.

Wait… Chris Pratt did what?

We caught Chris Pratt in the Club Random Podcast doing his best to explain quantum computing to Bill Maher.

Definitely not in our bingo card for 2025… Although in hindsight, it probably should have been.

Bill’s face when Chris is explaining what a qubit is…well, priceless.

So, do you think they nailed it? At least they got the big picture of the threat to security on point.

Bitcoin, it’s time to change: Recap of Hunter Beast at bitcoin++ Istanbul

This month at bitcoin++ Istanbul, Hunter Beast took the stage to address the quantum threat to Bitcoin.

The tone is evolving: quantum computing is no longer theoretical.

Bitcoin’s challenge is to find a way to confront the timelines. Hunter walked through the history of quantum progress, from Feynman and Shor to today’s NISQ-era hardware, showing how resource estimates for breaking ECC have shrunk over time.

Sudden progress may come not only from hardware, but it could also be algorithmic. Scaling breakthroughs are accelerating, and Bitcoin needs a plan.

Quantum Computing Keeps Evolving

From strong new alliances to small ECC keys broken with quantum, to qubits lasting far longer thanks to tuning, the past month has brought a wave of exciting developments in quantum computing.

Here are some of the top stories:

► IBM + AMD Alliance

IBM and AMD are joining forces to connect quantum computers, AI accelerators, and supercomputers into a single system, each piece handling the part of the problem it solves best.

Both companies assure that with these elements they could push computing past the limits of what classical machines can do. While IBM builds the quantum hardware and software stack, AMD contributes processors and GPUs from the supercomputing/AI side.

Their plan is to build what they call a “quantum-centric supercomputer”: Quantum handling physics-level simulations, while supercomputers + AI focus on large-scale data analysis and optimization.

First real world demo to come later this year, according to their press release.

► Node.js Added Quantum-Resistant Standards

v24.7.0, recently added to Node.js, included NIST’s post-quantum cryptography standards for future-proofing applications against quantum threats.

Algorithms and methods brought in are: AES-OCB, ChaCha20-Poly1305, ML-DSA. ML-KEM. SHA-3, SHAKE.

Read the changelog for more details.

► El Salvador is Protecting its Bitcoin From Quantum Attacks

El Salvador has relocated its National Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into multiple unused P2SH addresses, capped at 500 bitcoin each.

Unlike output types like P2PK or Taproot’s key path, Pay to Script Hash (P2SH) addresses do not reveal the public key before spending from them, which protects coins from quantum attacks.

Other output types that don’t reveal their public key until spent from are: SegWit (bc1q…), P2PKH(?) and Taproot’s script path.

Note: All current Bitcoin addresses are vulnerable after spending from them.

► First 6-bit ECC Key Broken by Stevetipp

Using IBM’s 133-qubit quantum computer, @stevetipp managed to break a 6-bit elliptic curve cryptographic key using a Shor-style quantum attack. The experiment ran on Qiskit Runtime 2.0 with an 18-qubit circuit: 12 acting as the main working registers and 6 as helpers.

After 16,000 runs, the output lined up in a diagonal ridge, a pattern that revealed the hidden private key from the public key. Even at 340,000+ circuit layers deep (more layers = harder to keep qubits stable), the system held coherence long enough to extract the answer.

Although a 6-bit key is nothing to panic about (Bitcoin uses 256 bits), Steve’s achievement shows that Shor’s algorithm is capable of effectively breaking elliptic curves using real quantum hardware.

<<hat tip>> to you, sir!

Dive into the full experiment if you want a break-down of the math.

Further questions? AMA with Steve!

► Scientists Made Qubits 30x More Stable

By tuning qubits with soundwaves, a group of researchers from Caltech enabled quantum states from superconducting qubits to remain stable for up to 30 times longer than with earlier approaches.

Although a big step towards fault-tolerant quantum computers, the lead researcher explains that their challenge is now to “be able to put quantum data in the system and take it out much faster.” For that, he explains, they must find ways of increasing the interaction rate by a factor of three to 10 beyond what our current system is capable of.

For more details, read the full paper.

Qafray Vaults: A Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin Ownership Proof Mechanism

There’s now a way to prove ownership of your coins from unspent addresses and without revealing your public key in the process.

Qafray Vaults is a last resort safety net in case of a quantum attack to Bitcoin.

Built by @BitcoinsSG, the tool is designed to provide a proactive, quantum-resistant mechanism for Bitcoin users to safeguard their coins by enabling users to embed a quantum-resistant public key in Bitcoin transactions via an OP_RETURN output.

According to the project’s GitHub, its design is intended to not only mitigate the impact against potential attacks on ECDSA — using Shor’s algorithm — but also SHA-256 preimage attacks on mining, by facilitating the network’s recovery and the “last honest block” agreement process.

Bitcoin Rails Podcast with Jameson Lopp: A Review of QBIP and What’s to Come

“Most people don’t think about security until it’s too late,” says the Casa co-founder and CSO, Jameson Lopp.

Recently, Lopp has turned his attention to mitigating Bitcoin’s quantum vulnerabilities, including market risks associated with quantum-vulnerable Satoshi’s Coins + longer-term strategies for quantum-hardening of Bitcoin addresses long term.

In this special episode of Bitcoin Rails, @isabelfoxenduke and @lopp went over:

• Lopp’s experiences designing self-custody products at both BitGo and Casa

• The swatting attack he suffered in 2017, and the radical steps he’s taken to secure his home location since

• The ‘quantum computing’ challenge for Bitcoin and its impacts on Satoshi’s Coins

• How the network may respond to QCs in the face of ossification and why QC preparation may be the hardest governance test the network has ever faced

Check this special Bitcoin Rails episode!

Project 11: 30% of Bitcoin supply at risk of a quantum attack

Project 11’s team recently updated their list of Bitcoin addresses that are vulnerable to quantum attacks.

Latest available data shows that over 6 million bitcoin sit exposed, spread across more than 13 million addresses, a concentration of dormant and active coins that would be at risk if quantum computers break elliptic curve cryptography.

Check Project 11 for more metrics and further info.

Final Thoughts

Bitcoin will most likely not become quantum resistant based on one proposal alone.

Efforts like BIP 360, QBIP, and other post-quantum work can converge to build optionality into the protocol. But the safe option must be there in time.

History has shown us that changing Bitcoin is a year-long process, some would even say decade-long.

The truth is, we don’t know when quantum computers will be good enough to break Bitcoin, but the chances of that happening in the next 10 years are far from zero.

Let’s not roll that dice, and start shifting from awareness into coordinated action, before we get dealt a bad hand.

In the last 30 days, there has been significant movement on Bitcoin quantum resistance — including a new proposal from Casa CSO Jameson Lopp and the QBTC sidechain team, as well as the addition of Ethan Heilman as a co-author of BIP 360 and revisions to the proposal that focus on Taproot quantum resistance as a “first step” toward addressing Bitcoin’s quantum vulnerabilities.

BITCOIN QUANTUM HIGHLIGHTS | JULY

• Jameson Lopp presents plan to phase out ECDSA/Schnorr + proposes freezing of QVC coins 5+ years after activation of BIP 360

• BIP 360 gets Ethan Heilman onboard — re-focusing the BIP on making Taproot quantum resistant

• Hourglass v2 in the works: Now limits spending to 1 BTC per legacy input per block (rather than 1 UTXO per block)

• New research suggests RSA could be broken with 20x less quantum power than previously believed possible

• Trump modifies PQC policy: agencies are no longer required to start implementing Post-Quantum Cryptography

MONTHLY QUANTUM POLL

Earlier this month, Hunter ran a poll on X to gauge how the community wants to handle quantum-vulnerable coins.

Nearly 300 votes came in, and there was a clear winner: 41.6% of voters prefer to just do nothing. In a post-quantum scenario, this could lead to the liquidation of coins held in quantum-vulnerable addresses.

The second most voted alternative (28.4%) was Hourglass v2, a proposal still being developed by the Anduro team, designed to drastically slow down how quickly quantum-vulnerable coins can move.

Jameson Lopp introduces a 3-phase plan to make Bitcoin quantum-resistant

A group of contributors, led by Jameson Lopp and the QBTC Bitcoin sidechain team published a proposal titled Post-Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset.

The new approach outlines a phased plan to transition Bitcoin users away from ECDSA/Schnorr signature schemes and towards BIP 360/PQC addresses. This proposal assumes BIP 360 as a pre-requisite.

• Phase A:
  A soft fork that prohibits sending to legacy address types (like P2PKH, P2SH or P2TR). Only quantum-resistant address types (P2QRH) would be permitted for new outputs.

• Phase B:
  Roughly five years later, a second consensus change would prohibit spending from legacy outputs. Legacy UTXOs would become unspendable unless migrated in time.

• Phase C (optional):
  Introduces a recovery mechanism using ZK proofs of seed ownership (i.e. xpub/xpriv keys). Use of ZKproofs would allow users to prove ownership of frozen coins without revealing private keys, but would require the introduction of a zk-verification opcode, which may be contentious and requires significant research.

This approach is the first public proposal to define a formal timeline for sunsetting vulnerable legacy ECDSA/Schnorr signatures.

OPCAT author Ethan Heilman joins BIP 360 effort

OPCAT co-author, Ethan Heilman, has officially joined BIP 360 as a co-author alonside Hunter Beast.

Heilman is working on narrowing the scope of the BIP to focus on Taproot quantum resistance – which does not require the introduction of new PQC algorithms into Bitcoin right off the bat. This approach offers a more palatable “first step” in making Bitcoin quantum resistant, before introducing new complex signature schemes.

Following his arrival, BIP 360 underwent a major update. Here’s what’s new:

• Taproot-based structure:
  The new version reuses Bitcoin’s Taproot output format (P2TR), but disables key path spending. That means P2QRH outputs can only be spent via script path, never by revealing a classical public key.

• PQC decoupled:
  Instead of including post-quantum signature algorithms in BIP 360, the authors now intend to propose post-quantum signatures in a separate BIP. This allows developers to activate Taproot quantum resistance without needing to introduce PQC, which will require substantially more review.

• BIP 360 in its updated form may be reviewed here. Additionally, please feel free to review this quick explainer video by Hunter Beast

New Hourglass Iteration Proposes 1 Bitcoin Limit per Legacy Spend

The Anduro team is working on a new version of Hourglass, dubbed v2, which is set to be a consensus-level upgrade to limit the speed at which quantum-vulnerable bitcoin can be moved.

This proposal is still in research phases — however, folks can learn more about their process via Hunter’s recent talk at PubKey in NYC.

The team hopes to make changes that will effectuate the following:

• Disable creation of new P2PK outputs (like Hourglass v1), with plans to phase out reused addresses and possibly P2TR key path spends (i.e. BIP 360).

• Limit spending from quantum-vulnerable addresses to 1 BTC per block (from 1 input per P2PK output per block in v1), drastically slowing movement from these addresses — and expanding the number of protected addresses to include reuased ones.

• Hourglass v2 requires change over and above 1 BTC per spend to be sent back to the original spending address at the consensus level.

• Set to establish a timeline and bandwidth cap for risky output types, gradually pushing users toward quantum-resistant formats.

Core motivations for these changes include maintaining incentive-compatibility with miners (as in v1), while addressing incentives of holders and economic nodes (new).

The proposal is still on the make and the team is receiving feedback from the community in their discord channel.

For more information on this, please watch Hunter’s talk at PubKey on the subject here.

Quantum Bitcoin Summit at Presidio Bitcoin

This month several leading Bitcoin developers — including Peter Wuille, Ava Chow, Tadge Dryja and others — descended onto the Presidio Bitcoin in San Francisco to roundtable about potential quantum mitigation in an invite-only setting.

Tadge, Hunter, Jameson Lopp and Lightning Labs' Olaoluwa Osuntokun all presented proposals for mitigating the quantum threat. To view the talks at this event, check out the Presidio Bitcoin X page here.

PsiQuantum founder Terry Rudolph was also in attendance, giving an update on the state of quantum computing and its likelihood of breaking ECDSA anytime soon — hint: he took the "over" bet when asked if this might happen in the next 5 years.

For a full breakdown, including insights from Bitcoin Policy Institute’s Matthew Pines, Zach Shapiro, and Zach Cohen on the event’s takeaways and what quantum means for Bitcoin’s future, watch the Bitcoin Policy Hour recap here.

Government Agencies no Longer Required to Implement PQC

A modified Executive Order from President Trump replaced one of Biden’s final actions on Post Quantum Cryptography.

The new EO:

• Removes the original deadlines for PQC deployment across federal systems

• Eliminates the need for agencies to require post-quantum capable solutions from suppliers

• Removes the requirement for international encouragement to use PQC

To learn more about other changes made to the US Post Quantum Cryptography Policy, dive deeper into this story.

Breaking RSA Now Needs 20x Less Quantum Power

Craig Gidney from Google Quantum AI published a paper that shows how a refined version of Shor’s algorithm could break RSA-2048 encryption in just 12 hours and with less than one million noisy (not error corrected) qubits.

The new research revisits a 2019 paper of his own, in which he estimated that breaking RSA would require 20 million qubits and 8 hours.

FUD of the Month: Did China Really Break RSA?

This month, headlines claimed that Chinese researchers broke RSA using a quantum computer.

• What really happened?
  The paper referred to covered a quantum experiment to factor a 48-digit RSA integer. That number is only 22 bits long in binary, far from cryptographically relevant, as standard RSA encryption used today typically relies on 2048-bit or 3072-bit keys.

• Why the confusion?

  Headlines and social media posts skipped key details (like the bit length of the target) and implied this experiment was a breakthrough against real world encryption (it wasn’t).

• Impact on Bitcoin?

  None. Bitcoin uses secp256k1, an elliptic curve cryptographic (ECC) scheme that’s completely different from RSA. There’s still no known quantum computer capable of breaking it (or RSA).

I first looked into Bitcoin’s quantum resistance with my friend Kyle Crews in April 2024, who I'd met at Denver BitDevs. I invited him to join me in founding a company called Surmount Systems, and we applied to Bitcoin Startup Lab after interviewing with Albert Lang. Our exact business model was uncertain, but our research led us to one inescapable conclusion: quantum computers could pose an existential threat to Bitcoin.

Unable at the time to identify a clear path to commercialization, we pivoted instead to create the Surmount Systems Foundation, with the sole purpose of safeguarding Bitcoin against quantum attacks. Our flagship project was drafting a BIP to introduce a new output type, Pay-to-Quantum-Resistant-Hash (P2QRH). I’m grateful to everyone who donated and supported our efforts.

In December 2024, Jon Atack (rhymes with "attic") graciously assigned our proposal BIP 360 after several rounds of review on the pull request in the bitcoin/bips GitHub repository. Later that month, I accepted an offer to join MARA as a Senior Protocol Engineer - working to support the development of the Anduro sidechain platform, including the implementation of quantum resistant features like P2QRH. With the support of the team, I’ve been able to advance and advocate for post quantum cryptography in Bitcoin, and work towards developing a robust activation client for BIP 360.

I’ve worked closely with the grizzled Bitcoin veteran Mike Casey to help bring Anduro to maturity. We were joined by the singular Isabel Foxen Duke, who’s incredibly talented at marketing and business development. The three of us frequently put our heads together to solve problems around Anduro’s architecture, the federation, and how best to develop and promote BIP 360.

While the team is grateful to be working on Anduro, the true end game in our work is facilitating the opt-in transition to quantum resistant addresses on Bitcoin. If native Bitcoin is affected by quantum attacks, no pegged asset is truly safe either. BIP 360 (and related proposals) remain the priority.

In May 2025, the direction of the project got a new burst of energy when Ethan Heilman, author of BIP 347, agreed to co-author BIP 360. Ethan has made several substantive suggestions to the BIP, which we’re currently integrating and workshopping with leading cryptographers in the space. I’m incredibly grateful to have him on board and look forward to continued work to optimize the cryptography and architecture put forth in our proposal.

We also hired a team of three experienced full time engineers to help accelerate BIP 360 technical objectives. This involves libbitcoinpqc, a future BIP 360 Bitcoin Core soft fork client, and a signet.

But ultimately, our mission is not just technical. We must work closely with Bitcoin developers, miners, node runners and other stakeholders to arrive at consensus. The community must align to solve this problem, and we are under no illusions about the difficulties associated with activating changes through largely undefined governance protocols.

We believe the Bitcoin community will pull through to address this potential threat, but we don’t believe it’s inevitable. While the timeline for action is ultimately unknowable, we know our risk, by definition, accelerates as time passes.

Who knows? Maybe quantum computers are a complete scam and we’re busy protecting imaginary money from an imaginary threat. In some ways I’d welcome that outcome. It’d be easier and offer better job security. But with over $40 billion invested in quantum computing so far, and the U.S. government briefing top officials on post-quantum cryptography, perhaps they know something we don’t. Regardless, improving Bitcoin’s quantum security can’t hurt. Bitcoiners are monetary doomsday preppers, and post-quantum Bitcoiners are about as tin-foil-hat as it gets.

I want to express my sincerest gratitude to everyone who’s supported me on this journey, through podcast interviews, encouragement on X, contributions to the Surmount Systems Foundation and to the BIP (especially reviewers!), and of course to my team at Anduro. I’m also grateful to others working on similar proposals in this space, including QES2, QRAMP, pqcBitcoin, qBTC, Project Eleven, and DASK. I’d also like to acknowledge Ian, Pierre-Luc, Tippie, Chris, Jameson, and many others who’ve chimed in. We’re working hard to build everything needed for a BIP 360 implementation that people can test and, one day, activate, and also to be diligent and build it the right way. We hope to have something ready by the end of the year. Stay tuned for more!

If I had to guess, I think there's a diverse galactic alien civilization that can surveil us but generally chooses not to interfere. I think one individual from that community of aliens took pity on us. They might have a way to conduct their society that seems proven to work for just about any sapient civilization, and there was a period for about 5-10 years where we had most, if not all, the technology to start building it, but didn't. And so, SN got impatient, and published the whitepaper to a cryptography mailing list on 10/31/2008, about a year into the aftermath of the global financial crisis. It was timely, and appropriate. And it could be just the thing we need to get our act together.

I know it seems far-fetched, but... From the incentives it puts into place, it looks like Bitcoin could connect the planet using a money issued by no single nation state. If people can eventually agree that this sound, neutral money is good money, then ordinary people can do business with using the same rules that nation states and big corporations do, in a way that levels the playing field for ordinary people all around the world. It also incentivizes the complete expansion of internet access everywhere on Earth to facilitate commerce, breaks down trade barriers so wealth can distribute more evenly around the world to those who work hard, doing things that are needed. It promotes free speech and strong property rights, which are the cornerstone of a free and productive civilization; corruption is a productivity-killer, and the ability to speak truth to power unhindered is one of the most powerful forms of accountability.

Bitcoin also incentivizes us to produce more power than we need, so it might just accelerate decarbonization and electrification and puts us on track towards abundant energy. If the cost of producing fossil fuels rises with the cost of extraction, and clean energy eventually gets used in more affordable ways, especially through demand response programs, this could prime the grid for expansion of intermittent sources. Industry will gather in places with cheap energy, and clean energy is some of the cheapest— in fact, prices can go negative depending upon the time of day. Bitcoin helps to pick up the tab in what would otherwise be uneconomical, creating a chicken and egg situation; if sources are intermittent, or in the case of nuclear power, difficult to scale up and down in response to demand, more energy is needed (or produced) than is used. The situation is completely reversed if the cost of turning on a light switch was the same amount as the miner would have earned in sats (the timechain’s smallest unit of account, 100 million ṩatoshis to the ₿itcoin). The link between energy and money grows firmer with mass adoption.

And here's the clincher: Satoshi's coins, the way they were mined, is kind of an incredible "capture the flag" that can drive innovation into quantum computing. There's a lot of skepticism, and our best QCs just aren't very good. What if alien technology requires QCs to be very good? What if we can't "hear" the aliens because they talk using entangled photons? What if what physicists think is impossible, branding it a problem of no-communication, is actually just a protocol engineering problem? And would a civilization— after inventing a technology that enables instantaneous perfectly private communication across vast distances unimpeded by matter and entities inbetween— would that civilization at that point not stop producing radio signals at all after at most, a decade? (How many phones with number pads are still made?) It's just, so unequivocally superior. Besides, if some of the light from other stars is entangled... It's not like telescope CMOS sensors or optics would be all that helpful in telling us that. It'd probably take significant advancements to get there, and what better incentive than a million+ bitcoins in full, unhashed, unambiguous 65-byte public keys sitting on a digital ledger, waiting for someone to break EC DLP? The Elliptic Curve Discrete Log Problem is considered impossible to solve with modern-day computers while still being compact and efficient, but QCs might just solve for it in a realistic way someday, maybe as soon as 10 years from now.

Everything is good for Bitcoin. Everything hardens the protocol, every attack, every existential threat. Even the threat of having the elliptic curve itself broken will be a protocol-hardening moment. There are quantum-resistant signature algorithms that might possibly be efficient enough, and perhaps some sort of P2QR address (pay to quantum-resistant) support could be a soft fork, much as Schnorr signature support was added with Taproot. Do the risks of another soft fork outweigh the risks of lack of quantum resistance? This is unclear, but it’s possible we may have enough forewarning to organize an answer to this existential threat within Bitcoin Core. And while some have trivialized the threat QCs might one day pose to Bitcoin, it’s important to take all criticisms of Bitcoin seriously, because often there’s a kernel of truth to them.

In the near future, as humanity develops more powerful technology and expands out into the solar system, mathematically sound money will be essential. The Starship rocket currently under development aims to reduce the cost of getting payload to orbit by a factor of 100x. A kilogram lofted into space that once cost thousands of dollars will soon cost tens. Commodity money like gold presently costs about $60,000/kg. Would bringing thousands of tons of gold in from a metallic asteroid like 16 Psyche (to which NASA is preparing a mission to send a prospecting probe just this year) crash the gold market? Of course it would, but they could also make the market for a decade, and put everyone else out of the gold business... Including central banks, some of the largest holders of commodity money, and gold miners, some of the world’s largest polluters, poisoning the oceans. 35% of the mercury in your cans of tuna is thanks to them. Just something to bear in mind. After all, gold will still be needed to make Bitcoin miners, in the very least. Gold will always have intrinsic value, right?

Expansion into the solar system incentivized by precious metals and tourism could also compliment Bitcoin mining. Lunar miners with selenothermal heat rejection could use crustal rock as a heat reservoir, perhaps to be used in in-situ resource utilization techniques to blanket the surface in locally-produced solar panels. Automated by necessity, and unconstrained by the impact of weather, lunar factories could help offworld dirty industry. Equatorial mass drivers could deliver payloads that are caught by spacecraft that aerobrake with inflatable heat shields over several days, and land in water, like cargo freighters from the sky, to supply inexpensive downmass for orbital imports.

Finally, it's been postulated that the end state of Proof of Work is a Dyson sphere around the Sun. What if the aliens use their own version of Bitcoin, but it operates at the level of the energy produced by an entire star, and connects that energy to the rest of the galactic network? Remember, information and energy are closely related concepts, think Maxwell's Daemon. The concepts behind Bitcoin could drive us to harness the energy of our planet, our star, and join the galactic community, who transact using their energy across solar systems. By closely tying the concepts of energy and value by creating a money that can only be made through the consumption of vast amounts of it, they might just have bootstrapped us to join their Kardashev Type 3 galactic-scale civilization. And every civilization they've encountered so far either adopts an energy-money system, figuring out their version of Bitcoin, or they wind up destroying themselves. Bitcoinization is the Great Filter.

Not to diminish all that humanity put into all the things needed to build Bitcoin, and then subsequently adopt it into our way of life, but it’s hard to imagine any human being that knew the scope of what Bitcoin would become, which Satoshi undoubtedly did, would be so selfless as to put it out there and then just walk away, not once selling His early coins for profit, for they were practically worthless when He left, so long ago.

Or maybe all this is entirely implausible. Adherents to Occam’s Razor are surely sweating their hairless bodies on this point. Maybe so. Maybe Satoshi wasn't an alien, but what if we wind up doing all this anyway? That's, well, I think that's something I'd like to dedicate my life working towards.

But maybe, just maybe, someday 120 years from now, some internet archivist will discover this piece and I'll earn my footnote in history for being one of many I'm sure who predicted what might one day come to be. Wouldn't that be something?

--

Foreword

The Exophiles

We discussed my background on decentralized storage, things we've been working on at DIBA; RGB, BitMask and Carbonado... We dive deep into how Carbonado works, Nostr's importance, role, and growing adoption, and plenty of economics, politics, and energy, too.

It’s been a while since I’d done one of these… Been pretty heads-down building BitMask for DIBA just about all of last year.

Anyway, give it a listen, and let me know what you think!

For example, according to this recent story on Ars Technica, MacBook Pros of the same price are being made worse over time, even though the technology used to make them is getting better. In an economy that isn't an inflationary nightmare, such remarkable efficiency innovations would result in lower-priced goods, commonly lumped in with "deflation" by quasi-socialist Keynesian ideologues, and associated with recessions and business failure. Their solution during such times is-- of course-- increased government intervention, spending at the expense of monetary expansion, through debt issuance to prop up such "zombie corporations" for as long as the system will allow before their poor performance from a failed business model becomes inexcusable in the market. And if the business model is successful, as it is in Apple's case, its success goes unrecognized amidst a wash of muddled price signals.

It took me a long time and a lot of study to understand why the current system that's commonly called "capitalism" is in fact monetary socialism. And this is the sad truth; it turns out, socialism in all its forms results in significant societal costs. The results speak for themselves, everywhere it's been tried. Monetary socialism is just much more subtle than most forms of socialism, and as a consequence, is much harder to explain why it affects as much as it does. Saifedean in The Bitcoin Standard and The Fiat Standard does an admirable job at providing a high-level overview, which draws much from Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit.

This are the kind of things they don't teach in schools. Instead they teach, the government must intervene during economic crisis. How convenient for them.

Fortunately, the world is currently undergoing a transition to an internet of money. Those involved in this movement, the Bitcoiners, are on a mission to build a system that obsoletes money issued by government and big banks, with a system built on fairer, stateless, freedom money. The dream is, anyone could be their own bank. So, banks won't be needed, only wanted, perhaps if they offer superior convenience and customer support. But Bitcoin has no customers, Bitcoin is a tool, a protocol, that has no leaders or known creator.

Sats-- one satoshi is a hundred millionth of a Bitcoin-- earn no "risk-free" yield, they are not "backed by" any assets or entities, nor are they intrinsically valuable; sound money does not require yield to grow in value, and money doesn't need to be intrinsically valuable to be a good store of value. Many things develop extrinsic value and monetary premiums, especially in inflationary environments. In contrast, Ethereum has become a wealth concentration protocol. It becomes a system of those who can stake at preferential rates, and those who cannot, but must earn and spend their wei. If it were used as a reserve currency instead of speculating against Bitcoin as "gas that powers web3", it leads to a system of serfs and lords. Nobody else wants that. ETH's wei cannot become sound money if they aren't accepted as payment in the same way merchants are beginning to with Lightning sats. And that's why Ethereum is solving a fundamentally smaller problem than "supporting all global value transfer", and will always stand in the shadow of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is fundamentally egalitarian. If the reserve currencies ever "go to zero" due to a debt spiral and/or hyperinflation, all dollar-denominated debts can easily be paid off (a de facto debt jubilee), there can't be unpopular forever wars financed through monetary debasement, and wealth would cease to concentrate into the hands of the elites due to preferential treatment, but instead would have a chance to distribute and normalize on a global level. All this, using an antifragile protocol that plays no favorites, no matter who you are or where you live. That's the dream, and that's why I've dedicated my career to working on Bitcoin, because I can think of no more ambitious and worthwhile thing to do with my time than to help rid the world of central banks, the Federal Reserve being nothing more than a monetary Politburo.

Here are three concepts:

- Orange Metal, Orange Coin, where I relate my 15-year career in tech, why all the technology built in the past 30 years was built to concentrate power directly into the hands of the elites, and what people can do about it. It's basically a self-help book for those looking to get into tech. It’s also the name of this Substack publication. I’d detail some of my principles behind why I dislike a great deal how the web was built. It might read as somewhat of a manifesto:

“Satoshi showed us, sometimes the things truly worth doing are the things few others are paid to do. The web as designed was devised by a class of cloistered techpriests huddled in Silicon Valley ziggurats, in service to a banally evil corporate bureaucracy, the sheer hubris of humanity in full display of a modern-day Babylon, toiling on arcane technologies that concentrate power and wealth into the hands of the elite. In some ways, the web is a representation of all that's wrong with the world.”

- Pathways to Abundance, a treatise on the state of technology, and how if things were designed with a different set of constraints, an era of unprecedented material abundance could be unlocked for humanity, without necessarily developing blue sky technology like fusion power or nanotech. Topics would include microfluidics, synthetic biochemistry, decentralized industry, distributed energy production, and terrestrial in-situ resource utilization, the process of bitcoinization, and the potential macroeconomic, geopolitical, and demographic impact of all of these. I like to consider it more grounded, “near-futurism.”

- The Exophiles; Generations from now, it comes to light that Satoshi Nakamoto was an alien from a race of individualistic lizard-people, who gave a world filled with collectivist apes the gift of energy-money when they needed it most; and how subsequent generations would come to befriend each other and conduct trade across solar systems. Later books might explore different aspects of interstellar trade, and how families might form between peoples from distant stars. What would humanity have to offer a somewhat insular, highly independent and technologically-advanced alien race, and what would we want from them?

—

I’m curious if there’s any interest in any of these concepts, so, let me know. A fourth option is to just stick to my day job and just write more about some of the work I do on a daily basis for Carbonado, bitmask-core, and RGB. It’s become my normal, but to those unfamiliar with all the layers meant to augment Bitcoin’s base-chain capabilities, I like to think it’s understandably quite interesting and exciting work.

I’ve transitioned to working full-time on Rust Bitcoin projects, especially ones using BDK, LDK, RGB, and maybe even Sapio. My primary responsibility is the bitmask.app wallet, the core of which is open source here:

https://github.com/diba-io/bitmask-core

Also, here’s the link to the Telegram channel:

https://t.me/rust_in_bitcoin

I’d like to make a Matrix bridge at some point, but things are pretty busy right now, so, later.

Finally, I’ll be in Miami next month for the Bitcoin conference, and definitely don’t miss Jeremy Rubin’s pleb.fi event right before, I’ll be speaking there! Sign up here, don’t delay, spots are limited, it’s free and gonna be awesome:

https://pleb.fi/miami2022/

I’m currently in crunch mode and I feel like I’ve been crunching on various things for a while, so I haven’t had a lot of time to write. I’d like to get back to writing soon, but if I do, it’ll probably be published to Bitcoin Magazine first.

Keep learning and building, folks. The knowledge and tools will be needed.

Some are expecting a “flippening” thanks to Ethereum’s newfound (occasionally) deflationary tokenomics. However, they might be forgetting that market cap (as meaningless as such a metric might be) is calculated as price times supply, and shrinking supply alone does not make for a higher market cap. Further, a large part of Bitcoin’s value comes not just from its scarcity or high stock-to-flow ratio, but also, its dependability. It is a much more known quantity than the constant experiments put forth by the Ethereum Foundation. Lyn Alden dives into this in her excellent piece, An Economic Analysis of Ethereum. Turns out, scarcity of supply alone does not a sound money make.

One could also make the argument that ETH 2.0, by building inflation into the protocol, could worsen the already-suspect Gini coefficient of Ethereum (with the vast majority of wealth in the hands of the few), which Vitalik does his best to trivialize the importance of which in his article, Against overuse of the Gini coefficient. It’s hard to think of a more privileged take on the subject of wealth inequality. The supply is uncapped, much like the current system of the petrodollar, and as such, there is no limit to how much wealth can be accumulated by Ethereum whales.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin, and its hard monetary limitations set in stone since its inception, can endure few monetary shenanigans for very long. Bitcoin-facing derivatives markets, while still somewhat impactful, are not as highly leveraged as, say, fractional reserve banks, or nation states. Further, if Bitcoin does become the global monetary standard, Bitcoin whales will eventually be forced to spend their bitcoin to meet financial obligations payable only in bitcoin, and as such, they may never have to trade their sound money for dirty government-money. As bitcoin is spent and the Bitcoin Economy grows, it becomes more distributed around the world. Also of note, the Bitcoin transfer volume this year could outpace the entire GDP of the United States.

As for Ethereum, Tomer Strolight outlines a number of problems of fairness, inequality, community exploitation, an adversarial approach to supporters, and a never-ending string of broken promises in his insightful article, The Problem with Ethereum. It should give some background on why, from a Bitcoiner’s perspective, Ethereum’s approach to all of these things has been reprehensible, and not only contrary to the principles the Bitcoin community holds, but undermines the very value proposition of the concept of decentralized, cryptocurrency in the first place.

Bitcoin is meant to be an egalitarian protocol, where the bankers on Wall St. have to play by the same rules as the people on Main St., to the lobbyists on K Street, to the farmers in El Salvador. Nobody gets preferential treatment from Bitcoin. However, by introducing staking into the protocol, in addition to burning the base fee, as introduced with EIP 1559 in the recent London fork, the dynamics of the Ether token aren’t all that much different than the current, unfair system. A system where there are those who are privileged to have the majority of their money in investments, and then there are those who simply have bills to pay and have money sitting idle in their bank accounts, perpetually fated to have weaker purchasing power through protocol-driven dilution. And thus, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, at least, with Ethereum 2.0, with its two kinds of money: staked Ether, which provides interest, and unstaked Ether, which gets diluted by interest from the former. It’s sort of a decentralized Cantillon effect, remarkably enough.

While Bitcoin’s present volatility can be an issue, as it grows, the magnitude of the issue lessens a great deal with each halving cycle, as an analysis by Ecoinometrics shows in their article about Bitcoin’s Volatility squeeze. Let’s also remember: the reason Bitcoin is so volatile against fiat currency is, more Bitcoin cannot be made to satisfy demand, so, it exhibits an inelasticity of supply when measured against a money manipulated by central banks, in addition to efficiency losses from foreign exchange markets converting money between nation states. Bitcoin might be considered a more reliable way to measure scarcity in the context of the global market in addition to local markets, and as such, could be a better mechanism to distribute scarce resources, i.e., to back a functioning global economy with a money controlled by no single nation that can manipulate the money in its favor.

Arguably, much of Ethereum’s value could simply be a result of the fact that it is highly correlated with Bitcoin’s price performance. Bitcoin aims to be a store of value, Digital Gold, while Ethereum’s tokenomics generally used to resemble that of a commodity with a low stock-to-flow ratio, a Digital Oil of sorts. However, if it enters an era when new blocks would be added solely through the Proof of Stake mechanism, GPU miners may one day be no longer needed. This supports an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) narrative that would be more akin to a Digital Biofuel than a legitimately “green” substitute. One reason for this analogy is that, biofuels often are less efficient than their supposedly “dirty” alternatives. Likewise, if a vast system of cloud-supported validator nodes and the blockchain chandelier of 64 shard chains are implemented to their intended fullest extent, Ethereum will require an enormous amount of cloud computing, more so than it already does through Web3-focused services like Infura. Cloud computing is notorious for being energy-hungry, and its energy usage equals and possibly exceeds that of Bitcoin’s or Ethereum’s. An older figure for datacenter global yearly electrical consumption is 205 TWh/yr back in 2018, according to this article, The Bitcoin Energy Debate: Lessons from the Data Center Industry. Contrast this with similar, more recent figures for Bitcoin and Ethereum, as provided by Digiconomist, which is not known for being a source sympathetic to cryptocurrency mining.

As one can see, if numbers are compared, cloud computing uses as much, if not more energy than cryptocurrency mining. Interestingly enough, there are actually many ways Bitcoin miners can have a positive impact on energy production. One example is that they can co-locate near power plants, and use their excess capacity in absence of grid demand, while also avoiding transmission and power conversion losses, all thanks to Bitcoin’s flexibility and capability to tolerate intermittent consumption. Bitcoin could prove to be the “buyer of last resort” for energy sources that cannot find other buyers, which could prove to make renewable energy projects such as the ones proposed in El Salvador more economically viable at the outset. For more examples and context on why Bitcoin mining could actually be quite helpful towards accelerating the transition to renewable energy, and lessening impact on our environment, be sure to read Lyn Alden’s excellent article on that subject, Bitcoin’s Energy Usage Isn’t a Problem. Here’s Why. Not everyone might care about the ESG narrative, but it’s important to acknowledge concerns and break down barriers to adoption caused by blatant misinformation spread by the mainstream media.

Further, with the exodus of Bitcoin miners from the notoriously-dirty Xinjiang province (and the seasonal, slightly more environmentally-sustainable presence in southern China), the geographic decentralization of hashrate comes with an added benefit of reduced dependence on fossil fuels by locating to nations with a more diverse energy mix. Roughly 70% of China’s energy comes from coal power plants.

Getting back to Ethereum, two common arguments critics make are, one, to point out the DAO hack, where Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation seemingly— unilaterally— decided which fork to use as the main Ethereum chain. This is from a purportedly decentralized, permissionless, and public network. There’s been enough written on this point that this article won’t spend much time on it, other than to mention that it is a serious compromise to the primary value proposition that cryptocurrencies were meant to provide, in a way that no other thing made by humans can: a system of currency resistant to manipulation by any single party, no matter their capability for outsize impact. I’m sure people who’ve been in the Ethereum community are tired of hearing this argument, and might roll their eyes when this criticism and others are mentioned, but it’s important to acknowledge criticisms and understand why they exist.

The second argument critics often point to is the “70% premine”. This is not quite accurate, however, since that is taking into account its present supply of roughly 117 million ETH at the time of writing. However, as Ethereum went live in 2014-2015, 100% of the Ether supply was pre-mined. At least 72 million ETH wound up in the pockets of launch investors, the Ethereum Foundation, and core team members. This is detailed in a comprehensive piece written by Camila Russo, Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of Ethereum’s 2014 Premine.

Where Satoshi Nakamoto is not known to have sold a single bitcoin, since it was practically worthless at the time he distanced himself from the community in December 2010, Vitalik Buterin used his Ether for his own personal gain. The SEC might have a few bones to pick on that front. Gary Gensler, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission— for what his opinion is worth— has mentioned on a few occasions that Bitcoin is more akin to a commodity than a security, whereas Ethereum might actually be a non-compliant security. Indeed, it’s hard to argue that Ethereum is decentralized enough to not personally benefit its founders, which are ever-present and financially rewarded on a regular basis from their involvement, perhaps meeting the Howie Test used to determine whether an investment is a security. This could pose an existential threat to the currency, if it were to be eventually delisted, or heavily regulated, in markets in which it is traded.

So, as speculators on Wall St. continue to inflate the prices of commodities through reckless speculation on government-guaranteed junk bonds, among other factors, we begin to enter an “everything bubble”, and a situation manifests where, if professional speculators call the top of the bubble and it doesn’t burst, they could lose their jobs. And so, they don’t call the top, and it’s unclear when the boom will become the inevitable bust. Could be tomorrow, or could be till hyperinflation becomes too obvious to ignore. And there is one cryptocurrency that has dynamics familiar to banks thriving within the current rigged system, whereas there is one that stands against them.

Meanwhile, widespread adoption of the Lightning Network continues to prove an inspiration to all who wish the good money to replace the bad money. From a humanitarian standpoint, it promises to help provide banking facilities to the 70% of Salvadorans who are unbanked. Since Bitcoin requires reliable availability of internet and electricity, while also serving as a means to bootstrap financial infrastructure in economies in developing nations, it could serve as a powerful incentive to accelerate the process of connecting billions of individuals all around the world to the global economy. For more on mass adoption, check out this recent article on how Lightning adoption is propelling Bitcoin usage in El Salvador, and beyond.

Are there things Ethereum can do that Bitcoin can’t? Sort of. But not all the problems those things aim to solve need to be solved in that way. Ethereum can result in hidden organizational centralization, even if it’s a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). Something or someone, somewhere, has to use keys to sign a transaction to deploy a smart contract. Some smart contracts feature token migration or burning, which allows organizations or individuals to change code or move funds without their token holder’s permission. Meanwhile, things like Lightning Network act as a truly decentralized protocol, with peer-to-peer state channels and operate in exclusion to the rest of the network while providing cryptographic guarantees against double-spend. These rules that are well-defined, reasonably secure, and beginning to be battle-tested. So, while Ethereum allows developers to roll their own rules, Lightning makes certain guarantees as to how tokens are transferred on the network. For example, while NFTs aren’t really possible on Lightning due to absence of global state, fungible tokens are possible, such as the “colored sats” developed by the very promising RGB project. RGB pioneers client-side validation, which results in greater decentralization, permissionlessness, and trustlessness. Despite claims to the contrary, the Bitcoin community is actually quite technologically innovative. However, Bitcoin’s fundamentals must be sound for projects built upon it to succeed. And much as TCP/IP is implicitly included in discussions around the web, all of Bitcoin’s layers should also be included in discussions around projects built within its ecosystem, since they share a common protocol, much as any project built on the Internet does.

This then challenges the assumption that ETH 2.0 will be reliably deflationary— if Ether is consistently spent on-chain, and if L1 smart contracts are written to. However, not only do scalability measures such as side-chains and rollups undermine that factor, if fees prove to be too high for too long, developers will look into switching their dapps to being based upon cheaper, more scalable techhnologies, such as platforms built on Lightning. With over 15,000 nodes and hundreds added every month, and each node theoretically capable of between 10-1000 transactions per second depending on node hardware (from budget ARM single board computers and virtualized cloud servers, to full-fledged baremetal servers) and also software (LND can be tuned to scale to 1000 TPS on commodity cloud servers), it’s conceivable that millions of transactions per second could be performed over the network, if not now, then in the very near future. With Lightning and, in the future, Lightspeed micropayments, Bitcoin’s scalability well into the future is all but assured. And the best part is that the fees aren’t burned, but provided to those who are doing work to help to scale the system, fueling its capability to grow. If fees prove to be too high on L2, there will be demand for L3 systems. And thus, Bitcoin behaves not only like a layered money like the existing financial system, but also, similarly to how HTTP is a network infrastructure layer on top of TCP/IP, thus lending substance to the analogy that Bitcoin can be considered “the internet of money”.

At which point, Ethereum’s promise of a utility as “Web3” fails to deliver, no matter the catchy names, developer adoption, and ICO money. Because, in the end, the users will go where there is the least friction. And if adoption falters due to competition from more innovative platforms, Ethereum cannot be guaranteed to be deflationary, whereas Bitcoin makes a protocol-level guarantee that supply will decrease by half every 210,000 blocks (roughly four years, given that slightly more than a thousand blocks are mined per week— 52 weeks * 4 years * 1000 blocks per week = ~210,000). And it’s those supply guarantees are what ordinary people, developers, institutions, and governments need to be confident in its capability to be a reliable store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account, to power the economy of the future.

With all these factors considered, Bitcoin’s impact on the world could be much more positive and profound than the mainstream media is paid to make us believe. Meanwhile, no matter its recent and upcoming changes, it remains doubtful that Ethereum will have a similar impact anytime soon, and instead, is fated to continue to ride the coattails of Bitcoin, and all the financial, social, and technological innovation it brings.

If you liked this article, be sure to subscribe for easy access to future newsletters, and see my last article on why Bitcoiners claim that it’s the Best Money. Also, apologies to those who follow this for its purported focus on Rust. We’re getting there. It’s important, however, to appreciate the principles and impact of the technologies some of us might be working with.

Sunday, June 27, 2021

I recently met a local business consultant named Mark on the way to Miami for the Bitcoin conference. He asked me a question: "What do you think of Taproot?"

Ah, a small question with a big answer! I'm really excited about it, but perhaps for more reasons than most might realize.

While this article will be quite technical, hopefully it will be approachable enough to be of value to those who wish to gain a greater understanding of the technological underpinnings behind Bitcoin in order to have better ways to put the concepts into context, providing a foundation upon which one can become conversational on the topic. Immersing oneself in the technical language of a particular subject matter often helps one to feel more comfortable with it.

I also like to sprinkle in a good bit of philosophy in all my articles to highlight their big-picture significance. Technology developed without sound principles often lacks merit and can even be unethical. Bitcoin— the world-changing technology that is— deserves better than a dry analysis of its technical details, because it is so much more than that. Incorruptible, uncensorable, trustless money could transform civilization as we know it.

I try to do everything I can to help explain and communicate the concepts behind Bitcoin. I want it to be successful at becoming the best form of money available, above all others. It's my opinion that those who are not yet Bitcoin maximalists just don't yet know enough about Bitcoin.

Oh! One more thing. While I've been a professional technologist for quite some time, as surprising as it might sound, I honestly haven't taken Bitcoin as seriously as I should have until just this year. I've had to do a lot of catching up and my knowledge in some areas might be incomplete or incorrect. If you have better insight than I do, please don't hesitate to share. And if something is unclear, be sure to ask questions!

Back to the subject at hand. One thing Taproot does is it adds a P2TR addresses, which are a constant size (32 bytes plus a version byte), which makes it so script addresses such as multisig contracts look the same on-chain as regular spending addresses. The reason this is significant beyond just multisig wallets is that the part of a Lightning channel that's put on-chain is actually a 2-of-2 multisig contract. HTLCs don't get put on-chain, but they are communicated between nodes via the Lightning network, and are basically a hashed random number that's been signed by the same key used in the multisig contract for that channel. It can't be guessed, but—like all Bitcoin Script contracts— it can be proven if it's been signed by the spender, and these are then used as a sort of substitute for Layer 1 payments using the Lightning network.

Technically, all Bitcoin transactions alter chain state using contracts written in Script (or TapScript, MiniScript, Sapio, etc., which make scripts easier to write, especially safely, while also allowing for greater complexity), but we used to have different kinds of addresses for whether a hash of a public key was used vs a hash of a script. Now, all Taproot addresses are the public keys themselves (not hashes), encoded using bech32 (as opposed to other encodings, such as base64, base58, hexadecimal/base-16, octal/base-8, or binary/base-2, all with their own individual applications and purposes), which are the addresses we use that begin with bc1. Anything signed by the public key can be validated against its signature. And in the case of Taproot, both the signature and public key are published along with every transaction and are bundled along with many other transactions into blocks that are mined indelibly into the immutable blockchain.

The use of the public key rather than a hash-of-a-hash-of-a public key, such as in the older Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) address format could have consequences should quantum computers ever have the capability to derive the private key to a public key before a transaction is included in a valid block, and this possibility was raised during Taproot's development. However, unless the transaction is marked as being capable of being replaced by a higher fee (this is optional), once submitted to the network, it shouldn't be possible to replace it. And once it's been mined, it's immutable, barring reorg attacks (unilateral blockchain rewrites that override trustless consensus), which quantum computers as we know them shouldn't be any better at than classical ones.

Schnorr signatures, another new feature of Taproot, are interesting in that they allow multiple private keys create aggregated public keys. This could increase the complexity of the problem sufficiently that a quantum computer might not be able to derive all keys necessary for a third party to spend scripts signed by a specific public key. Whether or when this may become an issue is unknown, but if it were, such existential threats would have dire consequences for many commonly-used forms of cryptography beyond just cryptocurrency. And those living in the analog world find ways to deal with such a crisis that might make it seem like Y2K many years ago, or the "Unix 2038" problem a couple decades from now— It's important to remember these are merely digital problems, not natural disasters or global pandemics.

In the end, imagined crises without precedent are not a good excuse to ignore Bitcoin's benefits as a sound money that will reduce wealth inequality around the world, will limit any country's capability to wage perpetual wars, and will accelerate the transition to renewable energy. These are, to put it lightly, bold claims, but rest assured that I will address them in future articles.

Now, one thing that bears mentioning for newcomers is, Bitcoin scripts differ from Ethereum smart contracts in a few ways. One is that Ethereum contracts have a global state that can be shared amongst multiple "users" (those with wallets signing transactions that interact with a run methods that alter state within a smart contract). This then influences what is possible with the language, such as looping over data structures, and they can call other methods, even methods within other smart contracts deployed to Ethereum.

Bitcoin scripts, on the other hand, are primarily dependent upon their inputs and outputs, and lock and unlock depending upon certain conditions around whether things like a particular public key validates against a message signature, thus validating the transaction for anyone who can prove they can sign transactions with their private key upon revealing both the private key and the script that is used to spend, or at least, provide transaction outputs.

Both, however, are deterministic (in that they run the same each time given the same inputs and outputs, with no random behavior or "side-effects"), stack-based languages that have branching conditions allowing for complex logic to be evaluated, usually within the context of money and accounts. Bitcoin does differ in that not all script paths need to be revealed when spent; only the parts relevant to and needed to validate the spend. This behavior in particular is optimized by TapScript.

TapScript, like all computer code, is basically instructions (op codes) that are arranged in logic trees (code branches). Huffman coding is a sort of compression algorithm based on top of that, which de-duplicates code branches, and by using the Merkle property, in addition to public keys for these signed script hashes, these de-duplicated branches are secured by the hash at the root of the tree. Then, when the contract is to be spent, only the code branches that correspond to certain Merkle hashes of code branches are revealed.

This opens up the opportunity to use more sophisticated and complex on-chain contracts, which is the foundation for layers built upon it. Lightning enables forms of trustless consensus around even more sophisticated contracts, enabling fully decentralized client-side validated tokens, NFTs, identity and naming solutions, swap and lending contracts, and others, all built upon Bitcoin-based technologies. I'll write about a few of those in upcoming articles.

The process behind the development and activation of Taproot is a little messy, and the entire process isn't even expected to be complete until next year, but it's also a beautiful and inspiring exercise in decentralized governance that belies the culture of libertarian ideals in addition to a conservative and deliberate approach to development that provides so much value to Bitcoin. If fundamental properties of Bitcoin were changed as often as other currencies are (fiat or otherwise), such as supply and issuance, this would undermine the fundamental value of cryptocurrency: Stability and predictability throughout time in ways no other thing subject to the various whims and desires of humanity can ever hope to achieve. Bitcoin transcends this and is valuable because it has changed so little, which allows us to lower our collective time preference as a civilization that sorely needs the means to conduct business with money that cannot be unilaterally manipulated by anyone or anything without slow, calculated, deliberate consensus.

In conclusion, Taproot supercharges things Lightning needs to be successful— much like how SegWit did before it, making Lightning safe to use in the first place. Hopefully this will help readers understand Bitcoin better, and hopefully reduce friction to mass adoption little by little, one article at a time.

Remember: Friends encourage friends to learn about Bitcoin! Consider reaching out to others and explain patiently and encouragingly. Mass adoption of Bitcoin must occur with a sense of kindness and through its merit as a sound and powerful money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnujmpgGQgQ

So, just a couple things I want to make sure are communicated, because sometimes I forget to mention them…

I mentioned El Salvador, and I promise I’m not against it, I just think that Bitcoiners always stay true to their principles. Check out this article for a reasonable critique:

https://www.aier.org/article/hyperbitcoinization-by-choice-or-by-force/

I’m just saying, Bitcoin should succeed based solely upon its merit, not by some government mandate. I should also clarify, the US government only guarantees that financial institutions must accept dollars, and taxes are paid in dollars. No vendor is mandated to accept dollars.

I will say, El Salvador’s representatives voted the bill and all its language into law, and it’s no less valid than any law coming out of Washington for us Americans. In the end, we’re not the real stakeholders of this decision here. So, we’ll see, and I hope it goes well for them.

Jess also asked me about Bitcoin in relation to Rust, and I mentioned there isn’t enough there. However, I will admit, I totally forgot to mention Sapio! Check it out here:

https://learn.sapio-lang.org/

It provides a few useful tools written in Rust that allow developers to develop contracts for Bitcoin more safely and effectively. It’s developed by Jeremy Rubin, who put on an amazing event in Miami, and I hope he does another one. Link to the event I mentioned here:

https://pleb.fi/miami/

There’s also Dr. Maxim Orlovsky’s work here:

https://github.com/LNP-BP/

and here: https://github.com/rgb-org/

And also, the Monero Farcaster daemon, which is based upon Orlovsky’s Rust Lightning node:

https://github.com/farcaster-project/

Also, for more on how to learn Rust, be sure to check out the article on this blog that I mentioned here:

https://cryptoquick.substack.com/p/rust-and-the-revolution

Much gratitude to Jess for the great interview, and please excuse the moisture on my shirt, it was raining and I had to drag an ethernet cable from my house into her trailer.

Also, reach out if you want a Peace, Love, Bitcoin shirt, I can check and see if the guy who made those is still selling them.

I recommend Start9’s node for running Lightning and more:

https://start9.com/

And if anyone has any more questions or thoughts, or words of encouragement, feel free to chime in here!

—

Some things that might not be obvious to those wanting to break into tech is, there are lots of tech jobs in tech companies that don't deal directly with building the tech itself. The interesting thing is, it's also possible to learn and contribute by figuring out how to learn to code. I think Rust makes for a very good and modern foundation for this. Not only is the community diverse and active and receptive to newcomers, but all the docs are in one single place, and all the tools are standardized, making it easy to start a new project and jump right in without a bunch of preparation, unlike, say, the majority of modern JavaScript projects.

Rust also pays a lot of attention to correctness and gives you a lot of room to experiment and optimize, while also providing a large ecosystem of projects that you can leverage and build upon, all without having a cognitive load so high so as to making it seem impossible to get anything done in a language that values correctness as much as Rust. I see Rust as being no more difficult to learn for a beginner than NodeJS, but so much more is possible with it, everything from WebAssembly for replacing JavaScript, desktop apps using Iced and other desktop-native frameworks, and even mobile apps using cargo mobile, Rust is so much more than just a programming language that Linux nerds use to make databases and CLI programs.

If you’ve tried learning other languages, and they didn’t always make enough sense to you in order to be productive, give Rust a try. And you might not get it at first, either. Let it percolate, give it time. I first touched Rust in 2018, but I had to keep coming back to it before it stuck, and I got my first full-time job writing Rust professionally in 2020, and started using it in an open source blockchain project only just this year.

The fact that Rust is the only language other than C allowed anywhere near the Linux kernel should be enough to catch anyone's attention. C has been powering some of our most critical systems for the past 40 years. Rust has been said to be the language for the next 40 years. Adoption amongst Big Tech should also be a positive indicator, even if one is as skeptical of them as I.

I'd recommend Rust as anyone's first language. Beginners will need to find a good way to learn, though. Beyond the Rust book— which is of limited utility if not used for reference, since the context of that knowledge is only really most obvious when applied— there are GitHub examples (usually found by pressing the T key when on a GitHub repo and typing "examples") and Docs.rs, which I find most useful to understand what I can do with any particular project. Cheats.rs is another useful reference.

But let me be clear: The best way to learn Rust is to write Rust. Think of something you'd like to do, try to break it down into achievable pieces, then learn everything you need to learn to make it, but only as you're building it.

The next best way is to read Rust others have written, however, sometimes you'll come across Rust that doesn't always make sense for your skill level. Try looking around, and finding Rust that does make sense. Programming in Rust isn't like writing a mathematical proof. There's a number of ways to solve any problem, and choosing which tools one uses to do so are as much a matter of opinion and experience as they are fact. Which makes writing computer programs more similar to an art than a hard science.

Also, it's worth noting, the blockchain space hungers for Rust devs like you wouldn't believe. If you make contributions to an open source blockchain project, not only is that a great power move in the hiring process, it makes it easier for them to know what you can do, and you'll feel more confident you can get the work done. And if you’re not dedicating your time towards reinventing how the economy works, you know, the thing that’s one of the biggest determining factors in how anyone spends their time, well, for me at least, anything else would not be be sufficiently ambitious to be spiritually fulfilling.

You don't need a degree in computer science to be good at writing code. In fact, a degree in CS doesn’t guarantee you’d be any good at all at writing code. You know what does? Actual code you can point to that you’ve written and can speak to. That’s it.

I dropped out of high school and college several times, and just settled for a GED. Everything I know about what I do, I had to teach myself, because no amount of instruction or lectures or hand-holding would have made me learn something before I was ready to learn it, and when I was ready to learn, I sought out what I needed to know, all by myself.

A CS degree can be sidestepped entirely by just learning about the different data structures (map, list, tree, graph, etc.), getting a sense for computational complexity, understanding how computation occurs, such as the difference between the heap and stack, how memory and references work, and just appreciating the fact that we work with machines that aren't all that different, architecturally-speaking, from ones made 50 years ago. Try to balance the act of digging deeper and adding tools to your toolbox, with the actual practice of that knowledge and the use of those tools.

I used to be a web developer, taught myself PHP 15 years ago, JavaScript 10 years ago, and TypeScript 5 years ago. I then graduated to Rust, and I had to unlearn a lot of stuff that was necessary for web dev that isn't always going to be terribly necessary for the future. But you don’t need 15 years of experience to be any good. Newcomers can get closer to where I’m at with Rust by sidestepping all I had to learn. Did it give me valuable perspective to better appreciate what Rust has to offer? Sure. Did it distract me from actually learning Rust? Absolutely.

How does Rust fit into the revolution? Well, the web, as it exists right now, is designed to exploit and concentrate power and wealth. Cloud services commoditized infrastructure billed on a monthly basis, leading to an entire industry built upon a rent-seeking revenue model that discourages private ownership and wealth accumulation instead of encouraging personal responsibility, worker-ownership, and thus enabling big tech companies to put technology-- the common heritage of all humankind-- towards perpetuating a form of wage-slavery in an economic system without footholds, without promise, and without heart.

I see developing ways to be creative enough to no longer need centralized authorities would allow more people to have more ownership over their intellectual property and their means of doing business. The fact that Google can delete all your emails and photos right from under you and there's nothing you could do to get them back, should give anyone doing business with their services or using their software some measure of concern. Especially since their business model is simply productizing metadata, data about your data, sold to the highest bidder, so they may weaponize it into something used to change what you think and what you do.

However, the costs of centralizing all that technology cannot be understated. The web is designed for scale, not efficiency. It’s designed for a single giant corporation to serve billions of users. The web does not work like the internet does. The web has distinct roles, clients and servers, users and providers. The internet routes packets between IP addresses regardless of what role they have. We need the web of the future to be more like the internet it’s built upon. How different would the world be today if every browser was also a web server? To make existing systems run on a single user’s computer would be impossible. That’s why web technologies cannot be used to fight the revolution for decentralization. Performance and efficiency matters if we are to achieve sufficient self-ownership and self-empowerment. Every time a program is made more efficient, cheaper and cheaper commodity devices can be used to run it.

And there’s not much else out there that balances performance and efficiency, productivity and ergonomics, and stability and correctness like Rust does. Rust helps you treat the machine like the machine it is, not some higher-minded construct or virtual machine. You’re writing code that tells the CPU what to do, what memory to use, and how to use that memory most efficiently while making full use of the hardware it runs on. All that while helping you paint the broad strokes of the bigger picture all throughout your program.

So, that's why I taught myself Rust and why I'm using what I know to build the system beyond this system. There will be no people's revolution, gone are the factories in the countryside, one cannot seize worker-ownership of a global supply chain. So, time to make new technologies, built upon new foundations! And I'd encourage anyone to learn it if they want to do their part in fighting the good fight. The revolution won't be fought with weapons, but with better tools and ideas.

Further, without being able to accurately measure scarcity, that makes it harder for the market to make things less scarce.

People need to give themselves permission to really learn about money, otherwise, those who do can take advantage of those who don't. Not everyone should need to think about money, absolutely, but like it or not, everyone is in the middle of a global economic war, and those who can fight must learn to fight.

There's so much to know, and I get overwhelmed sometimes, but if you want to learn more, you really only need three things:

Some foundational theory in applied cryptography:

https://river.com/learn/how-bitcoin-uses-cryptography/

River Financial's glossary also provides good overviews of the BIPs:

https://river.com/learn/terms/b/#:~:text=zeros-,bip,-125

And then the BIPs themselves:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips

BIPs on GitHub can be searched using the search field on the upper left (GitHub's search is super helpful).

River Financial's glossaries are so good, probably because the more one learns about something, the more convinced you are to invest in it (money and time).

Learning to use GitHub is an important skill for anyone looking to use or invest in a software project. Of course, Bitcoin isn't really an investment. Someday people will stop taking dirty fiat and only take Bitcoin when you go to pay your bills. If you're putting your money into Bitcoin right now, you're just doing so before everyone else does.

And one of the best things about Bitcoin is, when the economy grows, your money goes further, so it's never ever too late to get into Bitcoin.

If you're not yet a Bitcoin maximalist, you don't yet know enough about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin will solve for wealth inequality, end perpetual war, and accelerate the transition to renewable energy. If you'd like to know more, subscribe and I'll explain more.

Feel free to reply to this email if you have any questions. Also, I'll be on a podcast tomorrow! Check it out:

• How to learn Bitcoin, and why

• How Taproot Supercharges Lightning

• How Bitcoin will accelerate the transition to renewable energy

Also, I’ll be doing a podcast this Sunday. Be sure to tune in!

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