A Quantum Fork is Coming to Bitcoin | Alex Pruden & Philip Martin

Transcript

This episode is brought to you by Fidelity Crypto. You'll hear more about them later in today's episode. Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Welcome back to Empire. I'm very excited about this one.

Really excited to have the chief security officer of Coinbase, Philip Martin, as well as Alex Gladwin, who is the [music] founder and CEO of Project 11 with us. This is going to be the security podcast, but even maybe one step deeper than that. I don't know if you guys have been reading Nick Carter's post about quantum and Bitcoin and, you know, we're all screwed here and I Yeah, I wanted to bring the two smartest security people that I know on to actually figure out what we're going to do about quantum and Bitcoin. So, yeah, Philip, Alex, welcome here. Thanks for having us. Great to be here. Yeah, excited about this. Um I think maybe the best play I'm going to ask like a ton of really dumb questions in this episode. Just be prepared because I'm way out of my depth talking about quantum. Um but I think

I'd love to hear just from you guys about why is this the moment in time we're recording this April 2026? Like Yeah, quantum quantum and then now it feels like boom, like we're walking I think Nick said Bitcoin Core is sleepwalking towards collapse. Like why is this the time period when everyone is starting to talk about this? I I mean I I can take maybe just a first pass. I think that I think the the primary reason is that two papers came out a couple weeks ago now. One out of Google. So, Google Quantum AI Lab and you know, so they're building a quantum computer. They also have folks that work on cryptanalysis. Namely a gentleman named Craig Gidney.

So, this lab came out and basically said, "Hey, if you look at targeting elliptic curve cryptography specifically, you know, past kind of work in quantum and cryptography focused on an older crypto system RSA, but Google said if you target ECDSA specifically and you and you kind of layer on some assumptions about the type of computer we're building, then potentially this is a much more imminent threat than than we potentially first thought." And there's a bunch of impacts across the cryptocurrency space. I think this was actually one of the more notable parts of this Google paper was I mean it was like a 1/4 quantum computing paper and a 3/4 survey of the digital asset space and all the various ways that things were vulnerable. And really explicitly said, "Hey, there's an urgency to migrate to post-quantum cryptography." That was paper one. Paper two,

uh that was independent of this was a team out of Caltech, which um you know, really it was like the S-tier level physicists, you know, founded, you know, company's called Aor Atomic, um founded by folks named gentleman by the name of Dylan Blowstein, who's done a lot of really seminal work on on quantum computing, uh out there. So, they came out with a paper that said, "Hey, you know, Shor's algorithm may be possible with as few as 10,000 neutral atom reconfigurable qubits." And just for context, like the prior kind of state of the art was between 500,000 and a million was what people thought we needed. So, you just took basically the bar that you had to clear to potentially break public key cryptography down all

the way to 10,000. And you know, just for context, you know, IBM has a system that's around 1,000 qubits and they've entangled, you know, kind of systems up to around 7,000 qubits. So, you're kind of like an order of magnitude at least in terms of the number of physical qubits you would need to potentially be cryptographically relevant. So, those that those two papers kick off a press cycle that now I think suddenly everyone is waking up to and like, "Oh man, we should figure something out here." Yeah, I think they're right. I think, you know, the the interesting thing about this whole space is everything is so speculative. Right? Um I I think Alex Alex very correctly said a bunch of like it might it could be it it we we think that maybe, right? Um and so that leads like reasonable people to

have wildly divergent views about what's true in this in in a way that I think I've rarely ever seen uh before. Hm. Maybe before going too deep into Bitcoin, can we just talk about um there's the system that every like cryptographic system that everything runs on, including our financial system, and it seems like that is kind of at you know, we've kind of run on this for decades and it seems like that is at risk. Um by the way, not just with quantum, but you know, we've been Santi and I have been talking about, you know, Anthropic and chat, you know, OpenAI and and what's happening with Mythos a little bit on the podcast. And so, it seems like there's these two threats, quantum and AI. Maybe before going too deep into Bitcoin, can you guys just like what's your mental model for how

you're thinking about just the financial system and the security of the financial system kind of getting upended right now? >> Yeah, it's not even the financial system. It's it's it's modern cryptography is what's at threat. Or at least a class of modern cryptography is what's at threat today with quantum computers. Um which is which is largely led to the I mean, I don't want to sound hyperbolic, but the ability to use the internet safely. Right? Um rests on uh modern public key cryptography, which quantum computers um which you know, a a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, which is the term that we use to talk about this, um would break fundamentally.

Right? Um that's financial systems, that's government, uh that's, you know, basically everything. Um and you know, Alex talked about crypt agility a second ago, which I think will be important moving forward. But the thing the thing of it is a lot of stuff that's built today um is not agile and can't be agile. Right? You look around your house and how many IoT devices are there? Um it's an open question, right? Is is is that stuff are the chips in those devices going to be able to be to to use post-quantum um algorithms? I don't know. Um maybe yes, maybe no.

Um are the manufacturers going to actually upgrade them? Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Um and so so this really truly when it comes to pass will be Y2K would be underestimated in my Well, Philip, I have I have a dumb question here. Will you So, we have all these devices. Like I'm recording, you know, I've got this microphone, I've got the computer, I've got the IoT devices, maybe someone has Amazon Alexa. Do you have to replace every single device? Is this a hardware upgrade or a software upgrade that will >> Depends how they implement it. Under the hood.

Um it could be either. Hm. Do you do you have a Yeah, Alex, go ahead. Yeah, well I I wasn't going to make a comment on the hardware or software. I I was just going to make a quick comment on the financial system point that you brought up. Um Look, I I I think it's true that there's a lot of uh there's a lot of risk to the broader financial system with that uses the internet, right? Like you know, the vulnerabilities are kind of more around like how it, you know, financial system is embedded inside of the internet basically, largely, not entirely. Um I think the one distinction between the broader financial system and what we're going to talk about, which is blockchains, is that you know, these systems already rely very heavily on trust, right? So, there's like a trusted

set of parties that kind of maintain the ledger, so to speak, or data like. So, in theory, um you know, I think an attack could be very disruptive, let's say, on Swift or something like that. But like in theory, you know, there's like a bunch of important bankers sitting around being like, "Hey, whoever did that last entry, erase that and like let's go back one." You know, and so I guess reverting or or preventing, you know, an attack from being able to profit from an attack on the broader financial system, I think is easier or maybe stated more clearly, it would be harder, I think, for someone to profit from an attack on the broader financial system, not impossible, just harder, as opposed to blockchains and digital assets, where it's like the authorization to move

funds is entirely cryptographic and it is it it like has to be one factor, right? Like if it was multi-factor with trusted parties, then it's kind of harder, I mean it's like less decentralized, right? I mean, that's that's kind of maybe an overgeneralization but I think sometimes I think people over overemphasize or or kind of are hyperbolic around this like, "Well, if a quantum computer comes out, like the world is going to end. Like everything is going to fall down." I don't necessarily think that's true. Everything has to migrate. By the way, banks are already migrating as is the broader internet. Like 50%, I can't remember, Philip may know the exact number. You know, somewhere around half or a third of all internet traffic is already secured using hybrid cryptography, which implements PQC. So,

like the ball is rolling and I think I think it's it's blockchains are kind of this in this unique position where they're super reliant on cryptography for their security. And migrating or mitigating a potential migrating to a safe form of cryptography and or mitigating an attack is just harder. I mean, as we're recording, there's been a spike in DeFi hacks that is unrelated to Bitcoin, but if you look at they're not all the same, but this latest one seems like perhaps some stuff could have been avoided if you had time locks or if you had a bit more of rate limits and stuff that I guess seems a bit obvious in hindsight but one of the things that we encrypt or you

see a lot of builders be extremely philosophical and ideological and perhaps not too practical. The question is more around, I think, Bitcoin. This is the heart of the discussion of this pod, but how would you describe the sentiment out there around Actually, you talk about the traditional internet moving now 50% to to kind of front this or or where where where are you in terms of sentiment of like how's the community adapt like is is the alarm fully being sounded and are people reacting to this or are they not moving as fast as you'd want? Yeah, my opinion and you know, Alex may have a different one, is is is mixed.

Um I think there are um you know, we can talk about Bitcoin specifically, although obviously this this impacts um the the the whole the whole sort of spectrum of blockchains. Um some blockchains are moving quite quickly, right? There's at least a couple, I believe, that have that have testnets up. Um that are using post-quantum uh cryptography. Um almost everybody has a roadmap. Um with with with the exception, I would say, of Bitcoin. Um and I think there there are a broad broad spectrum of of opinions within the Bitcoin community on um the timeline um as well as the risk uh of uh quantum computers. I think Nick

Carter has done some some good stuff on this uh that he's put out uh arounds for looking at where everyone stands to the extent it's possible to see. I I have nothing to add other than to say that I think Bitcoin, one of the reasons I think it's a hard topic in Bitcoin, and I'm sure we'll cover this more later, is there's this philosophical issue at play where, you know, a lot of the older um UTXOs um like Satoshi's are thought to be irrecoverable. So, like, you know, Satoshi may be dead. So, so okay, so all that value is just what do you do with it? Do you basically prevent a quantum computer from stealing it by burning it, or do you just let the quantum computer take it? And it kind of like you know, there's these two things about Bitcoin where that's like a really deep

philosophical divide. One is this concept of Bitcoin as digital gold, right? So, it's like the integrity of this supply should not be violated. So, like, you know, theoretically someone could just go and steal and then re- and then sell on the open market, you know, a tenth of all gold. Like, that's probably going to have a major price impact impacting people's confidence in the future ability of this to be a store of value. So, that's like one aspect. The other aspect, though, is Satoshi, right, created Bitcoin as a direct answer to what he saw was, you know, a corruption and mismanagement in the broader financial system. And this this property rights. Like, not your keys, not your crypto was a deeply rooted philosophical thing.

Look, I think this has made the conversation in Bitcoin particular. Bitcoin is kind of unique in this way. It has this uniquely large amount of value, and it's been around the longest. So, this is like a uniquely difficult conversation there that makes the conversation harder. I think makes people a little bit slower to want to recognize this is a potential threat. This episode is brought to you by Fidelity Crypto, a platform built in-house with the same discipline Fidelity applies to everything. So, you can invest in crypto confidently. Trade crypto backed by industry-leading [music] security. Get started at fidelity.com/crypto.

Crypto is offered by Fidelity Digital Assets NA is not insured by FDIC or [music] SIPC and includes risk of complete loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services [music] LLC, member NYSE SIPC. Yeah, let's go down the Satoshi rabbit hole. So, to tee up this conversation, there's, you know, Bitcoin's what's Bitcoin's market cap? Like, one and a half trillion today or something like that. Um Satoshi coins are like roughly 10%. So, that's there's a hun- So, the I think the question in the quantum land is uh the Satoshi coins and a lot of Bitcoin might get upgraded. Like, there might be a hard fork, and there might be, you know, the bit- the Satoshi coins might

get upgraded, but the or most of the Bitcoin will get upgraded, but the Satoshi coins maybe don't get upgraded. So, then there's like this $150 billion pot that people can attack. It's like the biggest pot of money on the internet that you can go attack today. So, the question is like, what do you do with these Satoshi coins? Philip, is that kind of the right framing? Yeah, basically. Um and I think I think that Alex is Alex is is right that there's there are basically two choices, right? You lock them in some way, uh or you leave them up for grabs. Um and, you know, there there are a bunch of different nuanced approach approach to people have suggested within those two buckets, right? Lock, but recover in some way if you can prove some some, you

know, some knowledge, that kind of thing. Um and neither choice is like obviously like the the clear winner. What do you I mean, let's go deeper. What do what do you guys think should happen? Oh, man, you're you're really just teeing us up to get flamed by uh >> I know, seriously, like the community. Right. Caution. Nick Nick Yeah, Nick can't take all the heat, you know, so. Go for it, Philip. Um look, I'll just preface this this is Philip's personal opinion, right? Um this is not Coinbase's view on any of this, but my personal opinion is um it doesn't make sense to me that we would have that much value up for grabs by the first person who can break a key with a quantum computer.

I think we have to do that in a way that that respects the ability of the people who own those coins to actually come back and claim them if we at all can. Right? Um and so that may be There've been There've been schemes proposed on like proving access to seed phrases that uh I think there are some possibilities in that world. Um but my my personal vote is I think we have to prevent a quantum computer from stealing it. Um and then we have to make some way for for those for those coins to be able to be brought back to life in the event that um the holder is actually able to recover them.

Yeah uh I'll I'll maybe I'll preface my answer by just making one or two points, and then I'll give you my answer. But I think first off, it's not just the Satoshi coins that are vulnerable, right? And you said something very important a minute ago that I think is very is worth clarifying. You said uh you know, coins will get upgraded. I think this is a the the right verb is active should be the active form, right? You must upgrade, right? Not your keys, not your crypto. So, anyone with a UTXO today, like, to be quantum secure, you must like do something, right? So, this is this is the issue. It's not that like, for whatever reason, Satoshi's keys are like hidden by or UTXOs are hidden behind some like wall of fire. It's that we think Satoshi is dead. So, they just are not going to be able to do the thing

themselves. But to be clear, even though Satoshi's supply roughly equates to about 10 uh you know, 10% of the overall, and there's a spread across many UTXOs, by the way, there's about 35% of all Bitcoin today that is has exposed public keys for a variety of reasons. Um and so all you know, potentially those are at risk, too. Um you know, and there's and there's, you know, some other exchanges out there um that do not have as good of security practices as Coinbase, as I would say, and uh that have left a significant amount of value that uh you can actually By the way, if you want to see like all of the various Bitcoin that's at risk, we have a risk list uh on project11.com where people can enter an address or even just like scroll through like the top you know, top top uh top folks.

Right? So, anyway, so there's there's a lot of value, and potentially people have to migrate it. To Philip's point, okay, what do you do if Satoshi's not going to migrate? So, what do you do? Look, my view is there's going to be a fork here. I I think it's to me it's inevitable. Um because these philosophical issues, I don't really see how you resolve them. And um you know, this forking is a mechanism by which blockchains potentially deal with this divide. And it's not the end of the world, right? We had Bitcoin Bitcoin Cash, irreconcilable divide between two camps around block size. Um I think it's not it's not uh unreasonable to expect this will happen again. And ultimately, the market will determine um which of those is more valuable. Or maybe both of them have some residual value. Um I don't know.

But that I I think whatever I think, I think it's going to ultimately just end up as a fork. You know, I don't I I I would be surprised if it didn't. Who are the major players here that could in the conversation, right? Cuz 2017, there's we've been here before, kind of like difficult decisions in the Bitcoin network, as far as I can remember. Who are the major players here that matter in the conversation? I'll start with this one. Uh yeah, I think um look, there's a historical group of core devs, uh which, just to be clear, has has kind of evolved over time. So, I think if you go back to 2017 and the conversations of that era, the characters uh who participated in those, like, many

of them have moved on. So, there are still some core devs, obviously, Adam Back and Blockstream, and you know, Greg Maxwell's around, Matt Corallo's around. Like, there there are some folks that have been around for a while, but but, you know, there are not as many as people would probably expect uh you know, core devs from the era of 2017. But the core devs certainly matter. Um I think you know, there's obviously institutional adoption of Bitcoin is much, much higher than it was 10 years ago. So, these institutions obviously have a have skin in the game, right? So, they certainly matter.

Um you know, and and and I I think those are probably the two primary groups. Although, maybe I'll add the third, which is like miners or Well, yeah, mine I guess I So, miners and maybe the you know, miners ultimately I think are going to do what they think everyone else wants. But, you know, I don't want to I don't know. Maybe maybe that's not true, but that's sort of my take. And I do think there there is like a there are there are loud members of the community that are not in either of those three categories that I think are kind of spoilers for doing something pragmatic. And I think you know, and and you know, and to be charitable to them, they're they're defending what they see as the core principle of Bitcoin, why they signed up to hold it. So, I would

maybe just just say like a long tail of community members who really believe in these deep principles of of Bitcoin in one way or the other just just just have an opinion. >> the way, Alex, didn't they win the 2017 block like they were they kind of helped win the block size wars. Like, they were kind of outnumbered in capital, but they were kind of the I don't know if that's the right framing on history, but I mean, you could argue that, right? Certainly the miners that like this the narrative is like the miners and like, you know, big bad corporations got together and tried to increase the block size. And the community rose up and won. You know, I that's like I think the popular narrative for obvious reasons in that community.

But yeah, no, look, I think it's not that their voices are probably not to be underestimated. it. again, this is why I think you can't rule out the the possibility that ultimately there could be a chain fork and then the market will just resolve it at some point. I don't know. Yeah. So, is it the is it fair to say it's the it's the economic nodes it's the it's the exchanges/custodians, the ETF issuers, and the balance sheet holders like the MicroStrategies are going to make this decision. Is that right? Uh I well, I'll I'll answer and then Philip you can decide if you want to take that as well. I think look, I I think they're going to make a decision around what they want to do with their assets and that decision may given how important stakeholders they are that decision may

may influence which you know, what everyone else does but I don't think necessary no one can decide for Bitcoin, right? So, I think but I do think look, if you look at the pure amount of capital it's it's inarguable that the economic nodes have the most to lose potentially. So, I think they're definitely going to be involved in this. Um and and I think this is a different this is a different thing maybe a lasting says, you compare it to Bitcoin Bitcoin cash there's kind of like that in that case it was kind of like ah you know, like we're getting like everyone gets two of you know, whatever they had before. So, it's kind of like only upside to do both whereas here I mean there's kind of there's some potential real security implications. So, I don't think it's quite as clear cut that everyone's just

going to kind of go one way or the other. I don't know. Philip may Yeah, no I think that's exactly right. Um I think I think no one can make a a can make a decision, right? And make it stick. I think it is a it is a it'll be a community driven process. But I think Alex is also right like the economic nodes um have the most to lose, right? And so I think they are going to be and and I think you know, we started to see this the ones who are most interested in in driving a solution. Yeah, to me it feels very obvious what's going to happen, right? Where there's going to be a freeze camp and a no freeze camp and the freeze camp is going to be the institutions and the ETF issuers and the exchanges and the custodians because they can't tolerate

client asset like they can't tolerate this risk, right? And then there's going to be a no freeze camp which is going to be the maxis and the the community and the idealogues and which is great you need you need both sides but yeah, no one can choose but if Coinbase says hey, all of the Bitcoin that's held at Coinbase is now doing is going on this chain then I mean that yeah, that's that's basically your decision. So, Philip I guess I know this is Philip's decisions and not Coinbase's you're speaking for Philip not Coinbase but like how do you guys make this decision at Coinbase? You know, it's going to be it's going to be really tough. I think we're ultimately going to do right we're we're here because of our customers, right? We're ultimately going to listen to our customers and our stakeholders.

Um and uh and weigh that very very heavily. Um I think that you know, I either way once there's a viable upgrade uh path we'll obviously upgrade all the all the keys that we have to make sure they're they're using post quantum post quantum cryptography. Um but I think this will be this will be something that we we listen closely to our customers and stakeholders on. I'm sorry guys but this doesn't sound any con- I I know we're here talking about this this does not seem controversial at all to me. If you're Saylor, BlackRock, Coinbase to your point Philip, you're going to do this because it's sort of like the asymmetry of not doing anything and having someone steal

Satoshi's coins is catastrophic to the network. To your point it's not just Satoshi's point Alex it's you know, up to what 30% of the supply? Yeah, good luck. Like not doing that is a Talib turkey on on Bitcoin. And it it's probably attach any probability of that happening over the next 5 to 10 years and you still get to the economical rational decision if we're all here talking about game theory of upgrading now. Question is who is who is going to put forth this upgrade?

And and is that maybe more the nuance like do we agree that this is the best upgrade or are we going to feel a couple of proposals I just don't know much about what's going on here? Let me steel man it. So, I think everything you laid out was very logical. Let me let me steel man the other side a little bit from a maybe slightly different perspective not as philosophical perspective. You know, Satoshi's coins are kind of obvious, right? We think they're dead. But about 15% of Satoshi's coins make up about 2/3 according to chain analysis of the lost coins. How lost are the lost coins? It's kind of a question and so like when you cross that you know, so Satoshi's coins okay, maybe fine. But like again, that only accounts for about a third of all the

co-coins that supposed to have keys. So, then like how do you where do you draw the line on confiscating effectively Bitcoin that hasn't moved in a while? Right? Maybe it's maybe >> This is the way to wake them up, right? I mean if we want to truly like I mean if they're not dead or their hard drives in a landfill like you know, this is this is actually a really fascinating way of understanding how many of these Bitcoins are lost or will come up and maybe we'll find out who the real Satoshi is. But now imagine you're someone working on this. Let's just say the core devs such that they are all come together and they said we believe in this we're going to do this and there's a there's a pull request so bit bit 361 actually has a bit for this now.

The bit let's say I won't name his name cuz he's getting enough flame on on X but the the author of bit 361 let's just say he is the you know, he is the person to press merge, right? So, it's like pull pull request is merging you know, and and miners all agree and every so everything happens for this you know, basically this freeze happen, right? And someone wakes up someday and said hey, my Bitcoin are no longer accessible. Do they have a legal claim uh against the author of that bit or the person that pressed the button? I don't know, right? This is there's a lot of so this is kind of like and so then you know, so people have talked about okay, well there needs to be a time frame. Let's say let's give people 10 years. That's all fine of course but

you know, 10 years from now now we're talking about the real risk that a potential S-C-R-T exists, right? So, I think I think the challenge is not so much the Satoshi's coins are kind of a straw man. I think it's more of like on the margin, you know, who is a long-term holder and who just lost their keys. It's you it's unknowable, right? And and I think that's that's why it's tough. Um to your question of like who does it? I mean Bitcoin is also unique in the sense that there's not a foundation associated with like upgrading it, right? There's kind of this like never-ending political battle of who gets to be speak a spokesman for uh for Bitcoin. Uh you know, if the New York Times is to be believed uh Satoshi Nakamoto I mean Adam Back uh you know, maybe working on something but others

may have ideas. You know, and so it's it's a bit chaotic and um you know, there've been a number of proposals over time. We outlined many of them in our blog we have a whole like rundown but you know, this has been talked about for years. I mean the question is who galvanizes in my opinion the the relevant question is who is able to galvanize the effort and the resources required to take this from an idea to a reality, right? This you know, Santi is you know, I've I've been part of the team that's launched the layer one blockchain and there's like a big big gulf between like the white paper and the thing that is secure that can secure trillions of dollars. And I I mean to me there right now we're in the idea phase and there are people that have ideas but

I think we're still pretty far from someone saying that they're going to do it. By the way though, that's true of all networks. Philip mentioned hey, there's people have road maps those are all great. Very few people there are a handful but very few teams have actually gone and done any concrete steps into making the ideas realities. Although of course everything has to start as an idea. Yeah, and it's very interesting because um there's there's going to be there's a whole separate we have to talk about this earlier. There's a whole separate set problems um after you upgrade to a quantum proof uh signature scheme. Um for example, the signatures are much larger.

Um the the the smallest of the larger ones is I think 10 times if I remember my numbers correctly the size of the current signature um of of an ECC signature. Um that's going to impact throughput. Um or it's going to kick off another block size debate. By the way, you mentioned uh or I think we and our Santi wanted to do you mentioned like the DeFi hack. That 10 times X energy signature that Philip's mentioning like that's a that's a called Falcon or FNDSA is what we're probably be standardized as.

That is like Google wrote an entire blog post about the nightmarish complexity of implementing that. And so like you think DeFi hacks were hard now to prevent like wait till people are trying to roll something like that into production. So, there's like a whole it's as as Philip correctly highlighted we're going into a world where there's a whole bunch of painful trade-offs that these protocol teams are really going to have to figure out But I I want to go to DeFi and stable coins in a second but what one more Bitcoin question for you guys. Is there a third option here? Um where let's say if so it sounds like both okay, Philip you kind of didn't fully give it sounds like you know, Alex gave a very strong view of like we should freeze the coins and I think you're you know, um it's maybe more in that not in that You

are in that camp Philip? Uh I think Alex didn't give his view on whether it should be frozen or not. He he he he he very skillfully sort of danced around that one. Okay, you dodged. Okay, so you both both dodged. Anyways, we got the freeze and the no freeze camp. Is there a third option like or would you guys's view on this change if let's say I think what everyone's scared of is like is China or like North Korea like going to you know, win the quantum race and then like take these coins. But what if you guys knew that let's say you know, Coinbase had developed a quantum computer or like the US government had developed a quantum computer and would get the Bitcoin coins and now you kind of get like court-appointed receivership of how many Satoshi coins are there like two 2

million or like 1.7 or 1.8 million coins and this turned into the strategic Bitcoin reserve and they were like we're never going to sell it. Is that option three? And would you guys be okay would you guys be like oh, interesting I'm kind of down with that. That's kind of a sci-fi option if if if I'm being honest. that's that's I think that's pretty out there in terms of of of reality. I I think Nick Nick has written that. He wrote He wrote a great By the way, I have a really fun short story where he like outlines this. Also, uh Kyle Samani, formerly of Multicoin Capital until he retired, I think he actually also tweeted exactly this about a year ago. Mhm.

I I agree with all of them. I mean, it's There's just so many what ifs, right? >> Yeah. I do think it like if you're going to pin it to me and say, "Hey, what's the third option that I think what is viable?" Look, one other issue that people talk about Bitcoin is what happens when the security budget runs out. And you run out of it and so like 1/3 is kind of a confiscate option, but with a less I mean, it's maybe less confiscatory is like you kind of roll Satoshi's coins into the back end of that. I mean, to me that's like if you're going to confiscate, that's probably the best or you know, some that is maybe the best way cuz then you at least buy yourself time for this other really controversial conversation. I don't know. It's like that's maybe a

Are you saying the Bitcoin network is going to have stock-based compensation? Uh oh, man. I'm getting enough of this. Santi, don't put that on me. That is a No, but so people should go listen to the episode we recorded with James Prestwich, who I think has been probably one of the strongest advocates of like putting in front like discounting to today the security budget question, but I hadn't thought about this, but it's a quite an elegant solution where if in the window of statute limitations get like you have like 5 years to claim, then you have that in treasury and then you disperse those to fund the security budget after all the emissions kind of dry up, which is actually a really elegant solution. What like what probability do you ascribe to that mechanism actually

going into production? Yeah, I probably low mainly because it's like I think this is just a huge controversial rats nest. I think when the fighting is all over, people will just be happy to be done with like whatever a simple thing. So, I think it's just I think it's elegant, but I think it may just be too much for people to accept all of this in one change, right? Cuz already you're already asking them to accept a lot of changes and so I I think that the lowest the yeah, I I I I I think it's relatively unlikely, but I agree with you. I think it's a somewhat elegant solution. One follow-up to this as you think about So, say this is actually viable and gets traction, how would you think about the period by which holders can upgrade because

you kind of don't at the pace it's sort of a function of how quickly do you think we're going to get to quantum state, right? Cuz if it happens and you still have the claim period that that could be a risk, right? In of itself, right? If you give 10 years, that's probably too much. If you give 5 years or 3 years, like I guess how do you think about that time frame? I mean, I think I think it's going to be less about the time frame and it's going to be more about how do you get the message out broadly and aggressively? Right? Um I I don't know if there's a big difference between giving, you know, 1 year and 5 years um in terms of the number of people who are actually going to take action.

Right? Um But um it's going to depend and and what we're going to see cuz we always see this is is 90% of it will happen within the first month or something. And then there'll be be a super long drippy tail of of of stuff that'll that'll last probably forever, right? Um or for at least as long as the window is open. The hard part is is is not setting the window, it's it's figuring out, hey, how do we get in front of everyone who needs to take individual action, right? For everyone who's not on exchange um or custodian or something. Everyone who has a a ledger in their, you know, home safe back in the corner somewhere. How do we make sure all of them know that they have to do something?

Mhm. Yeah, I think one important thing to note is we've kind of in this whole discussion here, we're sort of baking in the the assumption that um that quantum computers are going to be so-called slow clock systems, right? And let me just quickly define what this is cuz this this was relevant to the Google on our atomic papers. There's this concept of a slow clock quantum computer and a fast clock quantum computer. And basically the idea and the one of the reasons the Google paper was potentially quite disruptive or or, you know, uh yeah, uh potentially created disruption was they positive that their machine could run in 9 minutes, right?

So, theoretically the machine that they that they laid out, if we built it, they could run in 9 minutes. Why is that a problem? Well, Bitcoin's block time is 10, right? So, you basically now have a situation in which Santi, you put a you're you're doing everything right. Your your public key is not exposed, but now you want to send some Bitcoin to your mom or something like that. And now I can front run you in the mempool and with a higher fee, right? And so there And by the way, like once you get to that point, migration is kind of just going to turn into a giant bidding war of fees if you think about it. And so, I think it's it's maybe just important to call out that I personally believe that the the fast clock architectures are going to follow the slow clock architectures for a

variety of reasons. However, I don't know we I I think no one really knows how long for how long that will be true and that's really related to the question how will quantum computing develop? It's kind of an unknown, but certainly we we have to ultimately add in all of this post-quantum cryptography for everyone to leverage. And then there's sort of like the additional question is like, you know, for people who aren't going to move at all and maybe that's the first thing that gets affected, but you know, that you know, there's both aspects to this, right? It's not just Satoshi's coins. It potentially is everyone's.

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Impossible to know what Satoshi would do, but I would say he would probably want to see the network live. And I guess are we all in agreement that if we don't do anything, this there's a higher probability of Bitcoin fading into irrelevance if you don't do anything. So, the action sort of dictates you have to address this and you probably have to address this within 12 to 18 months. Wait, Santi, why do you think it fades into irrelevance? I feel like there's I think the worry is like someone let's say someone trying to get 10% of the coins, they dump the coins and the the price would get absolutely decimated, but I'm not I'm not I think it might be a setback, but I'm not sure it would fade into irrelevance.

Yeah you you I'll say it this way. Maybe I'll maybe I'll make this point. I I So, I think it's a good Will it fade I mean, this is your like kind of we're kind of war gaming. I will say this, I think there are uh there are there are networks out there and protocols that see an opportunity to differentiate themselves by having this post-quantum cryptography first and therefore Zcash is one that I think has leaned into this, right? And it's definitely a narrative that a lot of folks around the Zcash community are pushing and I think there's a lot of truth to it, right? And there is this then so there's this there is a sense of opportunity, I think from other protocols and I don't think that can be denied.

But let's go to that extreme, Yanni, cuz I I actually think it's a good question. Like what happens if we don't do anything? Cuz what is the status quo? Like you don't do anything, 30% of or what is it between 10 and 20% of the supply potentially is ex- someone get access to that and dumps it or I don't know what they do. As soon as those coins move, it will wreak havoc, you know. But once that is sold or whatever, like what in my mind, I was just thinking that that's probably pretty detrimental to the network.

But I I don't know if it survives, maybe it does. I I hadn't thought about that. Philip or Alex. >> Yeah, I mean, that's certainly fear, right? Is it's is it It does It there's two things. One, there's the obvious economic impact of selling that many Bitcoins. But two, like there's the impact on the trust of the network that I think is actually the threat. The long-term impactful thing that happens. And I think it's just really hard to know in advance what that impact will look like practically, right? How much trust is lost and breached there? Um Does this mean that, you know, institutions can no longer touch the asset? And and if so, what's that going to mean for the future of Bitcoin? That's

I think that's all open questions. So, I think I was going to say, Yanni, this naturally takes us to DeFi because uh for me, these are protocols that have more freedom to upgrade and but they have lit yeah, probably challenging issues in their own right. Some of them don't have as big of a security budget. They have way more surface area. I go back to like uh um is the solution I I guess in all this discussion, given what's going on with quantum, with AI, stuff like

Methos, are you on the spectrum of super ideological to more permissioned uh and more controls and guardrails, has your position changed one way or the other? Because I mean, Philip, you said something is important. You ultimately Coinbase wants to protect your customers. Like no one likes to see these 200 300 400 million hacks. And every year we kind of have close to a billion in customer funds lost going to Lazarus.

Open it Yep. Yeah, I mean, I'll jump in quickly. I Look, I mean, Santi and I have known each other for a long time, and you may remember that I got interested in this space working in the Middle East with Syrian refugees, and I think an aspect of cryptocurrencies that really appealed to me and led me to want to work in it was um the ability for people who didn't have any other option to be able to transact or save or transfer their value out of a war zone, right? It out of a you know, hard situation. I think so there's this element of financial freedom that is just a really powerful part of the narrative that has brought many of us to work on this.

Um that said, the freedom cuts both ways. As you as you just pointed out, it's also freedom for North Korea to fund its nuclear program, and there's nothing we can do about it because again, if if we wanted to do something about it, well, then we basically are going to revert to the exact same financial system that maybe excludes the people that I wanted to help. Um again, this is a tough philosophical question. I think practically though um you know, ultimately we live in a world of nation states with uh sovereign governments, and I think I think it is a little bit um uh optimistic, maybe or overly optimistic, to assume that there's just going to be some super financial system that every government just agrees to be a part of

and not wants to it doesn't want to try and control in some way, right? I mean, a government the US government could throw me in jail if they want. Right? And you know, but but the Ethereum network can't really do that to me, right? So, I think I think for for that reason, the reason that we all live in a world of sovereign nation states that can exert the rule of law over their borders I think you're just inevitably going to see more permissioning, and what I think that also implies is you're going to maybe see some fracturing uh across geographical lines um you know, for these various systems at some point.

I think that's right. Um I I think that's exactly right. I I also think that you know the the thing that I've always been interested in is is people are always going to write insecure code, right? Um it's just it's never going to stop. Um and they're going to write insecure code, they're going to put in the smart contract code, they're going to toss it on on a network somewhere. Where that starts to become a problem is where there's real value in that protocol. Right? So, how do we get better at um at you know, not preventing people from writing bad code, but it but it's flagging it when it gets on a network.

Uh but making it very clear to people who would interact with that, hey you know, you might want to tread carefully here um because this is you know, whatever the problem is with it, right? It's vulnerable, it's new, it's untested, it's it's a it's it's uh you know, it's a rug pull it might happen, whatever. Um like that to me has been this has been been very interesting because I don't want to live in a world where we have, you know, a bunch of heavyweight permissioned uh DeFi blockchains. I don't I don't think that's that that it's the spirit of crypto. I don't I don't think it's fundamentally uh going to result in a better system than what we have today.

Um but we do need to make sure that we can we can cut down attacks. Losing a billion dollars um a year to these things is just is just untenable. Might there be a nuance where like I think of crypto as lowering the barriers to entry and the switching costs even though you are not fully permissionless, but you have some guardrails. I mean, look, like USDC and Tether both can freeze your assets, and the consumer just goes to where the the most liquid coin or the coin that has the most brand, and there's a very small subset of people that actually truly care about philosophically. There is a whole subset

of people that are unbanked and don't have access to the dollar, and you know, for better or for worse, the dollar continues to be the most sought-after store of value. Um but if people are going to if we agree that like digital systems like DeFi are interesting to people because they make it more accessible you ought to layer in some way more protections. Way more because the the end user is unsuspecting. It's just not as sophisticated and you know but the threats are only going to increase far more than the end customer can catch up to leveling up their opsec.

So to me, that always forces back to if we really want this industry to grow, you have to assume that people are not going to level up their opsec, and just assume that you're going to get hacked, and work backwards from there. And that takes you to a more permissioned system, right? Where you can to your point, Philip, like you can freeze stuff, you can roll it back, and I hate to say it like that, but it all Yeah. Alex, I I think Yeah, no, I I think that Look, I think everything you said is right, but I think there's no one-size-fits-all, right? I think there is a lot of it really depends on exactly how much and who and what and and you know, how important. So um and I still I still like to believe that even I mean, USDC

is kind of a good idea, right? Or a good example in the sense that yes, they can freeze your assets, but it's by exception, right? Like you have to basically be proven wrong. Like like the way bank accounts work is kind of like you have to prove you're not guilty to get one, basically. Um whereas whereas like, you know, to freeze assets, really these issuers practically speaking, they you know, they do it if you are guilty. But that just even though it seems like a small difference, I think it's actually it's quite important and impactful, and it's one of the reasons why you've seen stablecoin transactions really take off. And so, you know, I think that's an example of how you can kind of have a maybe best of both worlds potentially. And then also, I just wanted to point out one other thing, which is that

you know, we're still in the pretty early innings of people really interacting with finance via cryptography, right? And obviously, the cryptography we're going to use is going to change, you know, as post-quantum, etc., but like you know, I still think there's a lot of uh really low-hanging fruit to improve security on the UX side, right? One of great idea that the that the ETH folks or folks from Ethereum came up with was this concept of account abstraction, right? Where you you know, you can basically just separate, you know, kind of authorization at the chain level from authorization at the wallet level, and you can create much more complex authorization flows that you know, maybe are a bit you know, it's kind of that maybe that part is like semi-permissioned, but you know, you can't what you do for your grandmother could be different than what like, you

know, someone who is an entrepreneur somewhere wants to Yeah, I know, there's like a whole bunch of flavors of this. And it doesn't have to get baked in necessarily to each app, and get baked into these various wallets. I mean, that's a broad generalization, but I'm confident that we will continue to get better as a space at this, or I'm hopeful maybe. Um Alex, you guys dedicated a whole section to stablecoins, and Philip, I think you guys didn't focus on that as much more maybe more focused on just like the industry and Bitcoin in general. Um I'm curious why Yeah, curious how you guys think about um just yeah, stablecoins at at risk here.

You're talking about the quantum on the quantum. Yeah. So, I think it's uh okay, maybe it's first off like as we move from Bitcoin to everything, I want to be clear. I think you know, I I don't I think every system has its risks, and I I don't really like one is not better than the other. I think they're just a different set of risks, okay? So, stablecoins are permissioned in the sense that uh or in maybe less at risk from a quantum attacker in the sense that money sits in a bank account. And so, like a quantum computer can't like reach into the bank account and like manifest the dollars in someone's hand across the world, right? So, like the the bank account is safe.

What is at risk is potentially the on-chain stuff. What is So, what would happen potentially? Well, you know, you could do the same thing you would do in Bitcoin or another network, which is like steal someone's USDT or something. Uh but I think the real challenge for the custodial style stablecoins is these admin keys that we're talking about, right? Because I think those are uh potentially uh or they they're definitely critical infrastructure, and potentially could be nation-state level targets. Right? If you had a quantum computer that you're not even looking to steal Bitcoin with, but you maybe want to mess up you want to mess with the US financial system, especially as more and more dollars go on chain. You know, that would be a way to create chaos, and given how much DeFi I mean, one of the big selling points of

DeFi is you have you know, transparent contracts all over the place, interconnected, and you know you take down I mean, it's just like we saw with the Kelp DAO hack that you're referencing, Santi, like Kelp DAO bridge got drained and ripple effects across a whole bunch of other DeFi protocols, and I think you can imagine a world where let's just say someone mints 300 trillion dollars of USDT and then or just or USDP or something, and then breaks a peg somewhere, and then there's a whole bunch of ripple effects that ultimately maybe won't won't be they won't have like real financial impact, but they could still be incredibly disruptive, and still cause the loss of billions of dollars of value. So, I think I think for those reasons, we think of stablecoin issuers as having maybe

a unique or maybe I'll put it this way. I think there's a there's a special urgency for them to maybe consider how they're going to protect those keys on from a quantum attacker. Um so yeah, that's my view. I don't know if Philip wants to add to that. I know, I feel like that's the thing that's great, and totally agree. Yeah. Philip, maybe you get from the Coinbase view, what are you most worried about? This idea of Bitcoin or just like you're running an exchange uh or you know, stablecoins or DeFi like on-chain stuff, like what are you most worried about? Uh gosh, um the answer is all of it. Um it's it's it's really the honest answer.

Um or my fundamentally, my job is about protecting Coinbase and our customers. And so, my focus is is always going to go first to um how do we make sure that Coinbase uh from an internal systems and practices perspective is uh is ready for this well in advance of us uh of there being any risk um and then as a person who's been in this industry uh for a decade as of last week um you know I I I really really care that the blockchains evolve to get this right.

Um and make good choices in terms of um and good trade-offs in terms of not just the the the quantum um algorithms they choose and how we deal with throughput and but also how we deal how we do all that while retaining the sort of the the the core philosophy that that makes this space not just you know bank 2.0. ZK Sync is the bank stack of the Ethereum. ZK Sync's Palladium is the only Ethereum secured platform that is purpose-built for institutions [music] that demand privacy, compliance, and full control of their data. ZK Sync enables financial institutions to thrive in the digital assets economy by

launching and monetizing their own chains, tokenize real-world assets, build programmable markets, and settle [music] cross-border in real time. Visit zksync.io to learn more about the bank stack of Ethereum and book a demo. Uh I'm going to pull up a didn't think I'd do this on this episode but an Elizabeth Holmes tweet here and uh I I do want to get your guys' take. Um this is actually more of the personal side of things. I'm curious how you how you guys both almost treat your personal security. So Elizabeth Holmes for people not watching YouTube said your search history, delete your bookmarks, delete your Reddit medical records, 12-year-old Tumblr, delete everything. Every photo on the cloud, every message on every platform, none of it is safe. It will

all become public in the next year. Local storage and compute. And I think this was in response to you know more like a a Mythos level model being released you know and maybe open-sourced. Um so but yeah Phillip I'm curious to get your take on this. I I so this is hyperbolic. And this is hyperbolic? Yes. Why do you say Two things. One um Mythos is a huge model. Right? That requires an incredible amount of resources to run.

Um it is not practical in the next 12 months in my opinion that we are going to have open weight models that that is going to be runnable um on a reasonable hardware. Um now we will eventually right? And so so perhaps this is a question of timeline rather than destination. Um and um I think that Mythos models like it are going to favor the defense versus the offense. I think that's true because as a defender I have so much more context on how our systems work than attackers do.

And I think that's going to let me get a lot more out of that model than an attacker is going to get pointing it at an API endpoint saying go forth and now. Right? Um and so as these models become more accessible um you know you have to make the assumption that there's a reasonable security team on the other side right? So maybe the the non-hyperbolic version of that tweet is make sure you know who your counterpart is counterparts are um where your data is and where you do not believe them to be good custodians of that yes you should absolutely take action to remove that your data from those uh from those hands.

Yeah. Alex in your personal life do you do things that maybe the normal citizen would say you know that's that's a crazy level of precaution? I mean I used to work at a privacy protocol so I obviously am passionate about personal privacy. Um and I yeah I do a number of things in my own in my own life. Um I I run a bunch of stuff locally instead of relying on services that uh some people may would pay for from the cloud for example. Um but look I I I think the the other reality is like look read the Elizabeth Holmes tweet like it's just not First off it's not even possible to like delete all of your data. Like how do you I where do I even get it right? People and people have

written whole articles about like these dark web brokers of people you know like um you know I had a security clearance when I was in the military and like my fingerprints were stolen I think in 2011 as part of the OPM hack. So I don't know how do I delete my fingerprints that were stolen in 2011? I mean it's just not you just can't right? And I think moreover like we all lead increasingly digital lives and there is like to Phillip I think it's absolutely right. We need to be you have to try and be responsible with who your counterpart is for where your data but I think there is also just some degree of acceptance that is like there's some part of your identity that's going to get out there and you know and this is why I think multi-layered security architectures are just the best way to go right? Because

like theoretically if you have a failure on one layer or a breach of one system it doesn't break everything else or it doesn't mean all of your accounts are therefore pwned right? So that's probably the most I guess there's a practical advice here you know for anyone is like multi-factor authentication, no you know no one single you know point of failure to the greatest extent possible and then minimize if possible your exposure but I mean there's just no way you're going to avoid all of it probably. Yeah. Can I push you guys to get a little more specific on timeline because reading both your papers I think you might disagree on this right? Phillip you said with the Coinbase paper called the timeline I think you said like largely irrelevant or it's maybe not yeah not not as important. I actually I I do think you used the words largely

irrelevant whereas Alex you actually had these like I think it was you know 2029 optimistic case and 2033 was kind of the base case and 2042 was the pessimistic case. So can I push you guys to tell us like when does this really actually matter? So the reason we say it's it's fundamentally irrelevant is because this process takes such a long time um and we have so little clarity that it doesn't matter to me if a quantum computer shows up in 2030 versus 2040. Um we have to start the work today.

Right? And so and so in that sense like you know maybe having a definite timeline is better from a you know motivating people perspective or it gives us a a goal but it's it's in my view it's it's like trying to chase a date sort of a red herring. Yeah I I don't think I do disagree much with that. I actually I think part of the reason why we put timelines in our report is partially because I think it was to push people well I there's two reasons. One is I think uh people are kind of lazy a lot of times with their estimates for these things and they're just like it's 20 years away cuz it's always 20 years away. It's kind of like that and that's like as deep as they ever get and I think the reason why we put kind of

these these predictions in our report was just cuz we have these various you know aspects of the analysis that we try and rigorously you know distill into a real timeline. Now that said I think um you know there's a lot of uncertainty as as uh Phil mentioned. But I think there is like an aspect of wanting to just show people that there is a trajectory for quantum computing to develop and I think the question is how quickly will we will will we will go along it. Now I think the other piece is and I think back to kind of dovetailing back to Phillip's point there's a there's a great uh framework that I really like called Mosca's inequality.

Michele Mosca is a quantum cryptographer at University of Waterloo. And then one thing he points out is like hey look you can't just consider the timeline for the attacker to get this capability you have to consider the defender and how long it's going to take to prepare for that attack right? And so you kind of have to like consider both things together you can't just consider one in isolation and it it exactly echoing what Phillip said I don't think there's you know just to be on the safe side and not end up in a scenario where the attacker has this capability before we're ready like we probably just given the uncertainty here it's probably makes rational sense for everyone to prepare start preparing today. It doesn't mean we have to panic but it means we should start preparing.

Yep exactly right. It's in in my in my experience with this once you start throwing dates around you start to argue about the dates. Yeah. And and and that it just if I get fundamentally it doesn't matter. Um the the discussion is about what to do about it. Yeah is there is there going to be a chat What's the chat GPT moment for quantum going to be? I think it'll probably be in the um in the simulation space um where we will see somewhere around drug discovery something like that will be a use case where there's like some element of useful quantum supremacy shown um as opposed to the toy stuff that has been shown so far.

Well I may I have a different take. Maybe we'll we'll have to agree to disagree here. I I think you're not going to see you're not going to see it. I I think real quantum development probably from this point forward as it pertains to cryptographic relevance is very likely to go to happen behind closed doors. Um the Google paper even hinted at this. In fact they the circuit that or sorry the uh yeah the circuit their short circuit they explicitly didn't reveal. They proved in zero knowledge that they that it had you know it only consisted of X many operations. And they explicitly said hey this is because we don't want this knowledge to be out there for the world. Uh if you look at the funding for these uh quantum companies and you look practically speaking like there is like they sell services

for like optimization and there is like some stuff like the vast majority of funds from for this industry comes from the government and like DARPA and by the way the equivalent agencies around the world. I think so I think the vast majority of money going into this space is for cryptanalysis and I think uh obviously that as a capability is something that the funders of these things would ideally like to keep a secret for as long as possible. So it's not that I necessarily think we won't see evidence in the simulation space or otherwise that um you know that there is progress, but I just don't know if we can count on it.

I think there's I think there's also a lot of reasons to believe that it's possible that um these thresholds get crossed effectively behind closed doors and we don't ever know that they do. Yeah, I agree that's that's absolutely possible as well. Just going back to something that we touched on the security budget it factors into the timeline a bit too. And I don't want to make this whole pod around that, but I mean I think it's quite a bit of a threat. Like how does Bitcoin continue in the absence of block rewards and um what's your guys' take on that?

Um I my personal view is I tend to agree with you. I I've always kind of believed that at some point 50 years from now when like you know mining is just truly unsustainable or there's so much like demand from data center, you know, AI type use cases that like you know, obviously below a certain below a certain security budget you're not going to have the same trust that you would want for a system that you claim is digital gold. And so I think the natural solution is just to tag on a tail emission, have inflation as a percentage trend towards zero over time, but maybe have a constant inflation. So that way there's like a way for miners to plan. I mean that's that's kind of a controversial thing

obviously in many aspects in many parts of the Bitcoin uh community. I I think ultimately it's not going to be for any of us to decide. Prob- I mean unless this quantum thing ends up being part of that, but like you know, us leaving that uh assuming that doesn't happen then I think you know, the future generations of Bitcoin are going to have to grapple with this. It's hard to say, but I I kind of agree with you that ultimately the trust we have in Bitcoin is kind of dependent on the security budget. So either you have to assume that the coins just keep going up in value and the hash rate stays the same or you have to assume that there's some continued emission. I don't know you don't really get both. So I mean however that happens I guess we'll just have to

wait and see. Yeah, I don't dis- disagree with any of that. Uh I think the original theory was there'd be enough value in the fees at that point that you know, with the it would it would take the place of um the block rewards, but uh but I I agree with the assertion that it's very very important to the to Bitcoin's continued uh transability. As we click tend to close out the episode, um what is the best way for Bitcoin holders or to follow what's going on and we haven't talked about Taylor. We've talked about like who matters here, but um who are like the folks that haven't been as vocal that you think are going to

play a bigger role going forward? Well, in terms of how to sort of stay abreast of this, um I don't know if there's any one simple answer to that question. Um you know, I think what you're going to see from Coinbase going forward is a lot more about the um sort of the quantum risk both from a technical perspective like the paper that that we released as well as you know, from a from a non-technical perspective. Um and and really talking across all the chains. Right? Not just not just Bitcoin because it it the whole ecosystem matters.

Um but like you know, today I don't think there's a place that we could just that that anyone can just go and be up to speed. Yeah, I I think a lot more people are starting to talk about this, which is great. Um I I I want to particularly call out uh Coinbase and the work that Philip and his team is doing. I mean they're leaning forward into this whereas a lot of other exchanges are not. For example, they have this you know, quantum advisory council consisting of a lot of really impressive folks. Um you know, and and they're doing research that you know, on this topic, which is amazing and I and I hope that encourages other stakeholders um to do the same because ultimately you know, if we believe kind of in the in the philosophy of decentralization, like to

some extent it's it's incumbent upon all of us to contribute. And so I think Coinbase has just done a really good job leading the way here. Obviously Project 11 is like this is our whole MO is this whole thing. And so uh people can you know, certainly read up a lot of what we've written and but yeah, I'm I'm encouraged that the dialogue is starting to really take off and I and I hope it continues to and I think people shouldn't shy away from this topic. Uh they should embrace about learning more about it. I mean obviously it's pretty dense, but I think it's it's it's one of the most important topics uh of our time in crypto. Before we drop, do you think Satoshi coins move?

I I I think no. I think maybe I'll say this. I know there are uh there are people building quantum computers that would be interested in potentially they are they may or but they view it as like lost treasure, right? There's like oh, is this like lost treasure that we could get? And um you know, whether or not that's like a good legal theory. I think uh I I think there is like discussion about that and I think that's sort of why I don't think this risk is entirely just like in the abstract. I think people

have to grapple with this as a potential tangible and so therefore we just need to account for that in our in our planning. So I don't know, um but maybe. >> [laughter] >> Cool. Philip, [music] Alex, thank you guys. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.