Less than a week after the quantum terrorism spread by Google Quantum AI's paper, Avihu Levy discovered that the solution is already inside #Bitcoin.

The Chief Product Officer of StarkWare published a research paper on GitHub called QSB - Quantum Safe Bitcoin. The thesis: it is possible to sign Bitcoin transactions resistant to quantum computers using already existing consensus rules. No soft fork. No protocol changes.

The mechanism works in 3 phases
- Transaction pinning: uses public keys and RIPEMD-160 hashes to create computational constraints with a probability of a random string satisfying them of roughly 1 in 70 trillion.
- Digest rounds: searches for subsets among dummy signatures to generate a collision-resistant digest, effectively building a Lamport signature.
- Final transaction assembly.

The numbers
Against Shor's algorithm, the one that should break ECDSA, the system offers approximately 118 bits of security. Standard ECDSA, with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, would offer 0. Against Grover, 59-69 bits.

The underlying technology is called Binohash, developed by Robin Linus.

Practical limitations
Each QSB transaction costs $75-$200 in GPU power and requires 6-8 hours of computation. Transactions are non-standard and must be sent directly to miners. It is obviously not a solution for everyday use today, but the protocol designed in 2008 already contains the antibodies for a threat that is still closer to science fiction than to physical reality.

I discuss it in detail in Bitcoin Train’s Stop #294.
naddr1qqjk...

Let’s set the record straight:

Google has published a paper claiming that it would take 500,000 physical qubits and 9 minutes to break Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography. Today, Google has 105 physical qubits. It would need 5,000 times that number.

There’s one detail the industry media forgot to highlight: the paper itself specifies that mining attacks using Grover’s algorithm “remain impractical for the next few decades.” So why all the fuss? Let’s see who’s talking about it.

Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation co-authored Google’s paper. The same Justin Drake who designs and promotes Ethereum’s post-quantum roadmap. A week before the publication, he had announced a $2 million research initiative. He quantifies the threat and sells the solution.

Nic Carter, founding partner of Castle Island Ventures, led the $20 million Series A round in Project Eleven-valued at $120 million-a company whose business model is to sell protection against the quantum threat. Then he goes public to declare that quantum computing is “the biggest risk to Bitcoin.”

It’s the same playbook as Jamie Dimon with JPMorgan: publicly, Bitcoin was a “Ponzi scheme.” Privately, JPMorgan was buying shares of BlackRock and Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETFs. Fear is a business model.

Meanwhile, quietly, BIP-360 proposes a new type of quantum-resistant address. It’s already on the testnet. The ones warning you about the danger are the same ones selling you the solution.
naddr1qqsk...

On 23 March, a two-block reorg occurred on the Bitcoin network. Some people claimed it was a bug, a vulnerability, or an impending disaster – as is now usual in an environment where debate is turning into a football pitch.

But the protocol worked exactly as intended.

I discuss this in the new #BitcoinTrain article.
naddr1qqwx...

In the latest article of #BitcoinTrain, I explain how Bitcoin is being used by the Iranian regime to circumvent sanctions, but also by ordinary Iranians to survive the war and escape repression.

Some see this as a problem, because Bitcoin has no compliance office to decide who deserves to use it. It has no board of directors that can be pressured by governments, nor a switch that someone can flip when the narrative changes.

History teaches us that every financial instrument controlled by someone has been used as a weapon against someone else.
Anyone who wants money that discriminates wants a weapon, not money.
naddr1qqdx...

If an AI model were free to choose how to store and transfer value, which asset would it select?

According to the Bitcoin Policy Institute, the answer is Bitcoin, and it would do so based on objective characteristics: mathematical verifiability, the absence of intermediaries, immutable rules, and resistance to censorship.

It’s an interesting prospect, if it wasn’t for one small detail: machines, today, don’t make decisions. The decisions are made by the people who programme them, the companies that fund them, and the governments that regulate them.

So the real question is not ‘what would an AI choose?’ but ‘who controls what the AI can choose?’

That is the game being played right now.
naddr1qqjk...

In the new edition of #BitcoinTrain I address a question that has been circulating in my mind for quite some time: when AI makes everything abundant, what will still retain value?

Block has just cut 40% of its workforce in a single move. Human labor will increasingly become less necessary as more and more goods and services are produced automatically at extremely low cost. But in an economy of artificial abundance, which assets truly survive?

The answer may lie in a single word: scarcity.

Not the kind designed at a drafting table. Not the kind simulated by software or marketing. The real kind. The kind that no language model, no data center, no GPU can replicate or inflate.

The final scarcity.

naddr1qvzq...

Running here and not trusting governments. PV