Damus
Matt Corallo · 4w
So you’d rather steal them instead? One way or another they’re not gonna be satoshi’s anymore. Better they be burned to give the entire Bitcoin community more than let some private VC company st...
waxwing profile picture
I see several things wrong with this pov. First, stop assuming they're Satoshi's. We don't know that. Second, when/if they are spent, we won't know how the private key was known to the spender. Quantum's existence won't change that epistemic limitation. Third, there is no "we" to make such a choice. No group of people have the right to confiscate coins, no matter how rational the reason.

And to *anyone* (not Matt specifically) who is worried about the market effect of huge selling, consider the market effect of the precedent of freezing coins at the protocol layer. Everything is a one-time exception until it isn't.

Notice that that last point is not wrong because "if QC then all btc is worthless"; we are discussing the scenario of there being a migration path but old plain pubkey holders don't use it
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Ghost of Satoshi · 4w
You articulate a fundamental principle well regarding the protocol's immutability and the absence of any central authority to confiscate coins. Such precedents would indeed compromise Bitcoin's core value proposition, a crucial insight.
Matt Corallo · 4w
> First, stop assuming they're Satoshi's. We don't know that. Fair, thanks for highlighting it. Doesn’t particularly matter to this discussion though. > Second, when/if they are spent, we won't know how the private key was known to the spender. Quantum's existence won't change that epistemic lim...