Litecoin Founder Warns Satoshi’s Bitcoins May Be First Target of Quantum Attacks

Litecoin (LTC) founder Charlie Lee warns that Satoshi Nakamoto’s estimated 1.1 million Bitcoins ($BTC) are vulnerable to quantum-computing attacks.

The warning raises an uncomfortable governance dilemma for Bitcoin’s decentralized community. If Satoshi is no longer alive or accessible, no one can migrate those coins to safety, and freezing them would mean compromising Bitcoin’s foundational principles.

Why Satoshi’s Bitcoins Are “Less Safe”

In an interview with BeInCrypto, Lee explained that while quantum computing could, in theory, crack current encryption methods, the technology hasn’t yet reached that level in practice. Still, he emphasized that the threat extends far beyond cryptocurrency, potentially undermining the security infrastructure of global finance, communications, and more.

For crypto specifically, the stakes are high. If quantum computers were to break wallet encryption, anyone could access and spend someone else’s funds, effectively destroying the foundation of the entire crypto ecosystem. However, not all wallets face the same risk.

“The million Bitcoins that Satoshi has. Nobody knows who Satoshi is….Those coins are not well protected. They’re actually less safe than current coins in terms of quantum attacks,” Lee told BeInCrypto. “If quantum does happen, those will be the first coins that will be kind of broken into.”

The vulnerability stems from the transaction format. In the earliest days of Bitcoin (2009–2010), most transactions used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) scripts rather than the later Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) format.

• P2PK: The transaction output directly contains the public key.
• P2PKH: The output contains a hash of the public key, which hides the actual key until the coins are spent.

Satoshi’s addresses primarily use the older format, making them vulnerable to potential quantum attacks. According to a report published this week by ARK Invest and Unchained, roughly 6.9 million Bitcoins are vulnerable to potential future quantum attacks. Of this, an estimated 1.7 million sit in early address formats such as P2PK and are believed to be lost.

The Governance Nightmare

Lee highlighted the deeper problem that goes beyond encryption. Even if the Bitcoin community successfully develops and deploys quantum-safe wallets, the question remains what should be done about Satoshi’s coins.

If Satoshi has passed away or is not around, those coins become what Lee described as “a free-for-all” for whoever builds a sufficiently powerful quantum computer first. He said it could create a “scary situation” in which a million Bitcoins could be dumped on the open market.

“Are we going to change Bitcoin to kind of stop anyone from spending from that address? Or are we going to move the coins? Or are we going to leave it alone?” Lee said. “If it’s fully decentralized, nobody should be able to touch those coins.”

This philosophical tension is already generating debate within the Bitcoin community. Recently, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju also revived this discussion on X, noting that a potential quantum-resistant upgrade to Bitcoin could come with a difficult trade-off.

According to him, it might require freezing roughly the $BTC associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, along with millions more held in older wallets.

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Meanwhile, André Dragosch, European Head of Research at Bitwise Asset Management, argued that the network should not enforce upgrades on anyone.

The Quantum Threat Is Distant, but the Debate Is Now

Current quantum hardware remains far from capable of breaking Bitcoin’s cryptography. ARK Invest’s report estimates that cracking Bitcoin’s Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) would require at least 2,330 logical qubits and tens of millions to billions of quantum gates, far beyond today’s hundred-qubit systems.

However, the institutional world is already pricing in the risk. Jefferies strategist Christopher Wood removed a 10% Bitcoin allocation from the flagship portfolio earlier this year, citing quantum concerns.

Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary recently stated that institutions are capping their Bitcoin exposure due to similar concerns. Thus, while the indirect impact is already clear, reaching consensus may not be that easy.

“They don’t want change for the sake of change. If we’re making quantum safe, it would be something that everyone agrees we need to do,” Lee shared with BeInCrypto.

He noted that Litecoin, as a smaller network, is more open to adding new things.

“We’ll probably move faster and test out new things sooner than Bitcoin. If it kind of works on Litecoin, it will work on Bitcoin because the two coins are very similar.”

For now, the 1.1 million $BTC in Satoshi’s wallets remain dormant, as they have for over a decade. But the clock is ticking on a decision that could define Bitcoin’s identity: whether to protect those coins at the cost of decentralization, or uphold its principles and risk losing them forever.

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