Nic Carter: Quantum Threatens $600B of Bitcoin

Transcript

You're now plugged in to the deli podcast. >> Nick Carter, who made these loafers, tell me to see. Thank you for having me. You didn't make them, though. It I got them from a a store here in Miami called Blue Scarpa. >> How many pairs did you look at before you landed on Tiffany Blue? >> I own all of the loafers from that store. So >> So you keep them in business? >> I think I'm Yeah, I'm like their power user. So they make shoes in any color as long as it's blue. >> So you walk in and they just turn the lights on.

>> Well, they they know me. So >> I'm not like this most of the time. Just I really like this one. >> I want to sit in the store as you come in and just watch them >> into the design. >> Rally around you. They're great. Will they last? >> No. These are made of linen. They're not really meant to be worn. >> Damn. They're not. >> I thought it matched the fit. >> I love it. Nick, last time you were on the podcast was two years ago. Operation Chokepoint. >> Was that Was that it? >> That was it. That was before you broke the story and it became a a big deal.

>> And you know, similar to then that like I think that was one of the first ones I'd done on the topic. >> This is the very first very first podcast I've done on quantum. >> I had to pull out a lot of best friend favors to get you here. I sent one text and you said yes. >> Yeah, that was I'm retired. Until now, >> I don't do podcasts. I don't do TV. I don't >> Why not? >> I don't want to. >> That's fair. >> I don't want to. >> Does it distract from work or it's just you don't like the interviewers or what's the >> I don't feel like it anymore.

>> That's fair. That's a good reason. >> And I can communicate more precisely in writing. >> Well, the writing is good. For this episode, I'm gonna say a lot of stuff that's like slightly wrong, and I'll have to refer you to my writing, which is the canonical stuff. >> That's fair. >> So, >> so Nick, you wrote a four-part series on quantum's risk to Bitcoin. They're beautifully written. They have real purpose. It also feels like you enjoy arguing with with diehard Bitcoiners. Is that >> I'm not even I haven't even finished the series, the third installment.

>> Have you started it? >> No, but I'm think I'm thinking about it a lot. So that's like that that happens in the background and then eventually one day I wake up I'm like it's ready, you know. >> So why did So you had the Satoshi dice for like in 2018, so 8 years ago. And you put Quantum on there. Yeah, the FUD dice. >> Quantum was on the second edition of the dice. >> Same year. >> Yeah, in 2018. >> What got you to put it on that early? What was the >> Oh, because I ran out of fuds. I mean, there were like three or four additions to the dice. There's only so many fuds that you give it on a panel with a 12sided die. That's what else was on there. Think about how many sides that is.

>> Yeah, that's 48 sides. That's a lot of different FUDs. But quantum was always a good FUD because me calling something FUD doesn't mean it's not a risk to Bitcoin to be clear. Like FUD, some FUD is quality FUD. Like the block reward stability in the long term, right? the fee issue. That's quality fund because that's an unsolved problem. >> So is quantum back then though in 2018 that was 7 years ago, right? That's a long time though. It's like you know so a lot happened since then in quantum and this went from a very theoretical possibility that well actually it sounds

like most people in the field are saying this is going to happen. Mhm. >> So it was something that Satoshi knew about back in the day in 2010. Satoshi wrote about quantum and said, "Yeah, probably will break the hash functions eventually. Probably won't honestly, but that's what Satoshi thought." Jeez. So it's always been a potential issue with cryptography. >> So how much research did you do for these articles? How many people did you talk to? How many books did you read? I don't know. Put some numbers around it. >> Hundreds of hours. Jesus. So every 6 months I get totally obsessed with something.

So in 2023 it was choke point right and then it completely dominates my focus and before that it was proof of reserves and I don't remember what it was last year. I know maybe maybe you remember >> something >> and well AI and data centers that was probably my main obsession last year and the year before >> um and this year at the end of last year uh for the last 6 months of 2025 it was quantum and there's a lot of work you have to do to like get to a reasonable level of >> understanding first of all I didn't even know what quantum mechanics was let

alone quantum computing ing. You know, turns out quantum mechanics is the established theory in physics and it has been since 1920. I didn't know that. >> Um, it's very empirically, frankly, proven. Some people will disagree with me for saying that. Is proven. There's a lot of people like, "Oh, quantum computing isn't real because quantum physics is actually fake." I'm like, tell that to Neil's Boore. >> I wish I could debate this with you. Yeah. >> Yeah. I know there's actually people in in the year of our lord 2026 that say quantum mechanics is fake. It's like no do you but like we've known it's real.

>> So 6 months of time spent. I have other questions on that. But before we dive into all of the points I want to know >> Well, I didn't answer your question. Sorry. >> Fair. >> I talked to well over a dozen physicists >> including Nobel Prize winners. I we obviously made a big investment in a quantum resistance company uh which a lot of people are upset about. Um, >> why would they be upset about that? >> They like claiming that I have a conflict of interest. It's like I'm a VC. I invest in stuff I believe in obviously. Uh, that's how it works. Um, so obviously you know how much diligence goes into the full details aren't out yet. They will be in several weeks. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but

you know how much goes into a material investment. Just so just that alone, >> it's an obscene amount of work. >> Yeah. people don't see it. And then just besides that, I had this fascination with it. I wrote an entire fiction story about it for some reason. I feel like you have more time in the day than than the rest of us. I uh I don't know. And while I work, I I spend my weekends doing this, you know. And then I also really didn't want to get yelled at on the internet, so I wanted to make sure I was right about everything that I was writing down.

>> So, I was totally obsessive about my longer articles. >> I remembered your last obsession. It was boxing. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That was it. >> That was it. >> That one made no sense. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So, you spent a lot of time on this 6 months, read books, talked to physicists. Before I ask you all the questions about the reports, the rapid fire questions I have are, have you sold any Bitcoin following your research? >> No. >> All right. Second, but I'm not ruling it out. >> Okay. But but it is a no though right now. I would sell it if with some within the next year the Bitcoin developer community was not sufficiently mobilized.

>> Okay, that's a good point. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the second question I had was your percentage chance on a quantum break for Bitcoin within the next 10 years. >> By 2035? >> Yeah. >> 70 to 80%. >> Wow. Maybe higher. Damn, that's a lot. What would you put it at five years? By 2030 I would say 100% possible 20 to five to 30%. >> So 25 30% for 2025 >> there are many for 2030 there are many hundreds of millions of dollars that have been deployed with this belief in mind. So you don't really have to trust me. You have to trust Well, there's actually institutional investors out

there that genuinely believe this and were able to convince their IC to put hundreds of millions of dollars into this concept. Wow. So well billions frankly, but a quantum break of Bitcoin specifically, but you know, $10 billion roughly were deployed into quantum computing generally, but only a subset of that was with the idea that it might break Bitcoin. Okay, but that's materially more than what it was historically. That's >> This was 2025 was the highest year of quantum computing investing in history by far.

>> Typical rates like 1 to2 billion. >> Damn. >> Um, and I'm not even counting internal investment at places like Google or Microsoft or IBM. >> And that investment number, is that specifically to fix the problems we're going to discuss or is that to create alternative versions like coin? Like what are that's just the 10 billion is just general investment in QC with the idea that you'll be able to monetize the technology in various ways down the road physics simulation material science and of course breaking cryptography which you can sell to governments or you can steal all the bitcoin.

>> So your least favorite question but we have to set the stage and I'll ask one of it. What is quantum computing versus classical computing? You specifically told me when asked me that, but it's on the sheet. Quantum computing. All right, we won't dwell on it. So, classical computing is like a model of the world that's not accurate, right? You know, classical computers have finite states and they are deterministic and uh a bit is either one or zero and they're um so that's how like classical computers are. But the world the stuff that we are made of that's in this room

is not classical. >> It is made of quantum stuff. So particles are nondeterministic. They are probabilistic. They can be ones and zeros at the same time or both or neither for some reason. And uh particles can be entangled and be physically correlated in their attributes even at a distance even light years apart. It doesn't make any sense. >> It's just so hard to wrap your mind around like having something on Earth and then having it a billion light years away and them spinning at the same time.

No, it doesn't make any sense at all. Uh, but apparently, and I looked into it, you can't actually communicate information faster than light. So, >> even given that, so there's no loopholes around, you know, space-time charge. I know. I thought that was a loophole. >> Yeah. >> Um, and so the world is made of, you know, and and when you measure something, uh, you're also, uh, you know, collapsing the wave function and you're forcing it to be discreet. Uh, and so you're actually changing the nature of a particle when you measure it, right? So this is like >> that is crazy to me that I Yeah, that one part I struggle with a lot.

>> I mean, all of quantum mechanics is like an insane like I don't think anybody actually intuitively understands it. >> Intuitively, I I can't understand that that something could have multiple states. When I look at it, it only has one. Like, yeah. >> So, yeah, we live in a quantum world as we've known this for about 100 years, but physicists hated this. Hated this at the time. Einstein never accepted it really. He was really against it. And wonder what I mean cuz it's like if you're if I'm sitting here and telling you that you know um particles aren't in a specific place but they're kind of in a probability space and um you know I'm trying to explain to you how the double slit experiment works and particles

interfering with themselves and their function as a wave some percentage of the time and particles some other percent. You'd be like well this sucks. I hate this. >> Yeah, Newtonian physics is way better and more satisfying. So way easier to read. As it turns out, we live in uh a quantum world. And so then quantum computing is computing quantum lee. So instead of having uh you know regular old bits composed the computers, you have quantum bits which are basically atoms that are in a quantum state. uh so cubits and uh they can be one or zero or a variety and they can interfere with each other um and uh

that gives you way more uh degrees of freedom in terms of your computation. So you can do uh different sorts of computation that are just completely impossible classically. >> So that is my really bad explanation. >> No, no, it it's helpful. I mean a a couple things maybe also to clarify before we get into >> I will say there's no good explanations of what quantum computing is. >> No there is I argued with Gemini for a while before this interview and there >> there's no way to intuitively describe what quantum computing is. It's impossible. >> Jeez it >> but so like I'm trusting a that quantum mechanics is real. Some people don't believe that. Okay, >> but we're just going to assume that for the purpose of this discussion and two that not every physicist that says quantum computing is possible is lying

to us. Some people think that's true as well. They think there's a huge conspiracy of the quantum physicists that everyone is lying to, you know, extract money from the VCs and that uh quantum computing is fake. Uh and the $10 billion that were put into it last year, everyone was tricked. >> So, a lot of people think that. >> So, like without debating the technicals, like one thing is what you're saying, which is like all these people want to get all this money from the VCs. But as you and I both know, like the diehard technical folks, I don't think they care as much about that, right? Like, so why would they be lying? Like, yeah, I don't I don't believe that there's a big conspiracy of physicists, you know? I think there are some uh physicists that don't think

quantum computing will happen, but they're in the minority. And and there are some people that think thought the engineering challenges were too high for quantum computing to ever be useful cuz it hasn't been useful yet. Those people are defecting. So they're increasingly changing their minds. Now I would say the consensus among physicists physicists is this will happen. >> Mhm. >> Um and not in 30 years but maybe in 10 maybe in 15 years but maybe shorter. When you talk to these experts, the ones who don't believe the quantum mechanics is real, are those the ones that are typically raising money or not raising money?

>> No. I mean, you wouldn't, right? Like there there are people that want intellectual clout from saying that quantum computing or quantum mechanics is fake, but they obviously wouldn't start a company in the domain. >> I'm only talking to people that are bought in. >> I was kind of trying to figure out like the mercenary versus non- mercenary like that we saw with AI. like the mercenaries went to Meta, took hundred billion dollar paychecks. The real people kind of stayed at Google and OpenAI and Anthropic. But >> yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, it's very hard to say whether the people of Microsoft and Google and IBM were the purists or the purists are in academia or the purists of Regetti and OQ. It is very hard to say. People just seem interested in quantum computing because

it's intellectually fascinating and it's a new domain of computing which could be very transformative. >> Yeah. So, one other question to ask before we go into the fun stuff. Two of the things you called out in your second article was the difference between physical cubits and logical cubits. And you also made a really key point to discuss fidelity. And I think you did this because everyone on Twitter is just sharing these cubit counts. But there's a difference between logical cubits and physical and then like how accurate they actually are. So can you dive into that for a minute and then we'll go into the fun stuff.

>> Yeah. I mean so a physical cubit is an atom that's held in a quantum state, right? Uh there's different modalities for this. There's >> um there's like trapped ions. There's super cooled cubits. It's like when you think about those chandeliers that have multiple stages and then >> those Microsoft videos, >> they're really cold and they actually get colder and colder until they're 7 ml, which is like way colder than outer space. Like way colder. Like someone today was asking me, could you put a quantum computer in outer space? Would that help? I'm like, well, no, actually, cuz it needs to be so much colder than outer space.

>> That's crazy. >> Yeah, it is nuts. So, physical cubits are subject to interference. They interfere with each other. So if you have a lot in an array, they start to generate just all kinds of interference, right? >> Kind of like we're sitting I'm probably generating some radiation and it's interfering with you right now. >> Jeez. >> Yeah. And vice versa. >> But >> and so you need to error correct these cubits that are being hit with cosmic radiation and temperature and noise and someone was walking too loudly outside.

That's a real thing. uh the these uh quantum computers have to be held like in these very delicate uh like pneumatic uh you know bases so that so that there's no vibrations right the HVAC has to be in the different part of the building you know stuff like that so um but we did figure out uh more recently how to error correct the physical cubits and to get sort of like pure theoretically pure logical cubits which are the things that matter so that's the thing that you're really trying to count >> um And then the fidelity is basically the odds of uh a bit flip being successful and not happening for the wrong reason. And uh so when you're thinking about the success or progress of quantum computing, you want to think

about a two axis chart. You want to think this this chart exists. You want to have uh physical cubits on one axis and fidelity on the other axis and then you care about the frontier advancing. M >> uh so we've recently reached fidelity thresholds where people think okay this thing's possible that only just happened just a couple years ago people would say well we're below the uh fidelity threshold where adding more cubits means you're just increasing the total amount of noise in the system >> so you so hundreds of thousands I think to millions of physical cubits correlate to thousands or tens of thousands of logical cubits

>> yeah I For context, the best systems we have today have like a dozen logical cubits and maybe a thousand physical cubits. >> It's crazy to think that we need this at that cold of a temperature and walking close to the machine could mess it up and yet we need to scale. I think your article said three orders of magnitude from where we're at now. >> Yeah, but three order three orders of mag isn't that much, right? >> I mean, it's kind of a lot. Oh, like if how many orders of mag are we doing in terms of like flops a year in AI? >> Yeah, it's like one a year. Like you think about algorithmic improvements, energy, bigger and bigger data centers, better GPUs, >> power. Yeah.

>> So that in AI that's happening. I mean it happened quick too. How much bigger is Gro 5 versus whatever AI model existed in 2017? >> Mhm. >> Many orders of magnitude bigger, right? >> Yeah. >> Because we developed the scaling law in AI. We don't have that in quantum yet. >> It seems harder to spell scale quantum than AI. >> There's more variables. We haven't found a way to hold most of the variables fixed and improve on the ones that matter yet.

So before we dive into the fun stuff, we actually have to discuss the link between quantum and what is to break on Bitcoin. So like you identify three risks. The first one is trillion dollar bug bounty. So the ancient coins which is 2 million bitcoin sitting in Satoshi's original P2PK wallets. So that's a lot of money. Um, you when you go into the article, you discuss a lot of different things like how it's a pretty big moral issue because if we steal his coins, how do we even figure out who to give them back to? You also mentioned that we can't just retroactively upgrade his wallet, things like that. So, let's let's uh dwell on Satoshi's coins for a minute.

>> Yeah, I mean that's uh there's like two really big problems. If I mean if quantum happens and Bitcoin's not prepared, it's like the end of Bitcoin basically. >> So, but even if Bitcoin is prepared, it might also be the end. >> So, you're also so optimistic. So, so basically >> Bitcoin's never faced challenges like this before. Ever, ever, ever. The the Satoshi problem is very acute because Bitcoin is a replicated database that many people agree on one version of it.

>> There's no way for any administrator to change the way that Satoshi's addresses are encoded. >> Unless everybody that runs Bitcoin says, "We are going to collectively steal/burn Satoshi's coins," which has never happened before, right? In Ethereum, they did that one time with the DAO, right? The Dow hack in 2016 and they forked to change the state in a regular state change. Bitcoiners pointed at Ethereums and they're like, "You guys suck. This is the whole thing's arbitrary and like anyone could steal any coins for any reason." And now that's the only time they did that in Ethereum. But still, right? So, this is like that on steroids. I mean, you're

talking about the creator's coins. That's like God's coins. So, even if everybody upgraded their their wallets and and we'll go into the other risks, what you're saying is there's no way to fix Satoshi's wallets themselves. Unless you do something completely unprecedented, which is fork out the coins. Yes. Uh those coins are held in a vulnerable state, which is pay to public key, which is an address type that's not hashed. >> The hash is considered quantum resistant. So, Shaw 256 should be fine. But elliptic curve cryptography, the thing that is used to make sure that the private key to public key function is one way that is not secure against a

sufficiently advanced quantum computer. Satoshi's coins are in an in insecure format and it's weird that Satoshi left them like that because Satoshi was aware of this risk. Didn't you mention I forgot in the article you mentioned that he was like aware of the risk and hash the addresses twice or something like what was the >> well addresses are hashed in Bitcoin as a matter of good housekeeping. Um I don't think it's because of quantum I think it's just cuz it's see >> but you mentioned Satoshi was aware though of quantum. Yeah, but if if Satoshi had really cared about the risk, Satoshi would have not left a million to two million coins laying about.

>> It's crazy. >> Yeah. >> Like it's nuts. >> Why Why do you think they would do that? They They didn't think Bitcoin would be this successful or they thought Quana was further away or what was the >> Yeah. I mean, in 2008, it wasn't seen to be But if you're Satoshi, you're building this thing in the last 50 years. You have to consider maybe Satoshi didn't they probably they presumably thought that the whole thing was upgradeable >> easier to upgrade like in in 2010 Satoshi couldn't have known that 15 years later as it turns out it's impossible to upgrade Bitcoin and at that time Satoshi was changing stuff in Bitcoin all the time sometimes without asking. So Satoshi and Satoshi said this

on the forum. They said, "If Shaw is broken through quantum, we'll just upgrade." So Satoshi didn't realize maybe that the stakes would be what they are. >> Just upgrade seems so hard. Yeah. >> Yeah. But like during Satoshi's tenure, Satoshi left in 2010, like Bitcoin was still worth basically zero. >> Yeah. >> The whole time. >> We'll come back to Satoshi's coins. The the second risk you mentioned is the address reuse and there's a lot here. I think you mentioned 1/3 of the supply itself is vulnerable which is exchange cold wallets and tap routt addresses.

That seems pretty crazy too. >> Well yeah there's different things here. One is that if you reuse an address you have now broadcasted your public key on the blockchain. So if the public key is known with sufficially powerful quantum computer, you can reverse engineer the private key out of that. >> So if you don't spend the Bitcoin, your public address is not revealed >> if they're held in a modern address type with the exception of tap routt which jeez. >> Bitcoin developers making taproot not quantum resistant is the craziest thing that's ever happened.

>> How much of a oversight is that? like how easy would it have been? >> They knew. I went back and I looked at the discussion. They knew Luke Dash raised this objection at the time and said, "Hey guys, by the way, uh, tap routt addresses are vulnerable to quantum. This is 2021." At that point, we kind of did know that quantum would happen eventually. >> So, what the hell were they thinking? >> Why do you think they didn't take it? Why do you think they didn't trust Luke? >> Luke didn't actually try and derail the process. He just pointed it out. >> Okay. Um but I think Bitcoin developers are not physicists you know for the most part.

>> So their skill set is cryptography and software engineering and >> it's not uh being on the bleeding edge of what's happening in physics or theoretical computer science. So I think they just didn't have enough appreciation for the risk. So when you say I and I don't know if this is totally right but onethird of the supply that's addresses that have their public key revealed. >> Yeah. I mean it's more actually if you look at all the different categories of vulnerable wallets whether it's the abandoned P2PK Satoshi coins the address reused coins there's all these big exchange code wallets or um other uh niche categories of addresses that

reveal or expose the public key like top rate for instance. I want to say it's like 6 million bitcoins. >> Jesus. Yeah. >> But some of those can be addressed. Like if we have a fork and we're like, "Okay, everybody move your coins to quantum safe format." Most of those can be secured, but not all of those, right? >> What's the overall risk number? 6700 billion. >> You said a third, maybe a little bit higher. >> Yeah. I mean, it's hundreds of billions of dollars. And you know, like what you can't do is call up Satoshi and say, "Uh, hey bud, I know you've been like AWOL for a while.

That's fine. We're not mad at you. Please check back in." Uh, it's really important that you come back cuz we need you to move those million plus coins ASAP, dude. Otherwise, China is going to get them. So, like if I don't know if this is accurate, but like could the Binance hot wallet you mentioned or cold wallet, whichever one it is, um could they they could transfer their Bitcoin to a new wallet, but they would never be able to spend the money because they would reveal their key. >> The there is a risk that in the 10 minutes between broadcast and spend, this is a more niche risk. It's still worth thinking about. A quantum attacker could see the memp pool and they could be like, "Okay, let me quickly reverse engineer your private key from your public key and then I'm going to pretend

to be you and broadcast. It can, you know, but that is kind of not that likely to happen even in the case that quantum computing occurs because we think that it would take a really long time to compute a key quantumly. So probably you wouldn't be able to get all that done in 10 minutes and also you could just send the transaction to the minor directly. So in the 10 minutes to send the transaction that's not enough time for the quantum computer to reverse engineer >> assuming like normal roots of development. Maybe in 30 years it would. >> Okay.

>> But probably not. That's probably not the thing we have to worry about right away. >> So we talked about Satoshi's coins. That's kind of like unsolvable from what we're talking about. >> Problem. That's right. I wrote a short story about it. Think up the best case of the worst case. So then in part two now we're talking about publicly revealed addresses though that is solvable. >> I would I would say it's all solvable. It's just a matter of is the Bitcoin developer community and the Bitcoin community community interested in solving it. Satoshi's coins could be solved with a fork or we just say whatever the quantum attacker gets the coins. Who cares?

>> Um but how do we fix the address reuse ones? What do people do there? We implement a new signature scheme in Bitcoin which uses postquantum cryptography which does exist. >> It's not efficient. Your key sizes are most likely way larger. >> So it's basically implies a block size increase which Bitcoin can handle. I mean look at Salana, right? >> Yeah. >> Salana blocks are I think Salana is like 500 times more data per second than Bitcoin. So we can handle a block size increase. So there are obviously we have to pick a postquantum scheme which is like oh this is new and untested cryptography. This is scary.

>> Um there's a risk that the postquantum signature scheme could be classically breakable. That would be bad. Can you imagine if we were like okay everybody move over to this postquantum signature scheme. And it turns out ordinary computers can break it. But if we if you change the signature scheme that is that a hard fork or that's a soft fork? You could do it with a soft fork, but you would need a long time for people to move over their coins voluntarily. >> Oh, so it doesn't retroactively help people who don't move their coins over. >> Well, there's a couple ways you could do it. So, probably the Bitcoin way of doing would be a soft work. You have 5 to 10 years to like, you know, wake up or wake up from your coma or get out of prison. Like, you know, Bitcoin is meant

to be long. >> Yeah. Wealth technology, right? So, we can't just assume everyone's online. >> No, I Some people are like hermits, you know, they're at a monastery in Mongolia and they're on a retreat for a year. I don't know. >> Yeah, >> people are busy. >> No, I get it. They are. >> If you gave me a year to move my coins, maybe I wouldn't figure out how to do it. like got to go to five different cities and you know >> but the the big people would though like the Coinbases the Binancees like they would >> Yeah. I don't think everyone would honestly I mean this is why I'm saying we need to act now or plan now because maybe there is a quantum break in 5

years. >> Mhm. >> We need to have begun that migration. The the crazy part though about the timeline that's like killing me is you not only need years to like figure out the fix and discuss it, but then now you're also saying even if you had it, you still need time for people to move over. That's a really long timeline. >> Yeah. So when you work backwards from Qday, >> which is like Y2K the bottom, we work backwards from Qday. Okay. Qday, let's say it's 2033. Okay. We'll be conservative, right? How long will it have taken for Bitcoin to migrate? I don't know, 5 years. Okay. How long will it have taken for us as a community to agree on the path forward? 3 years.

>> How long will it have taken for us to test the code? A year. That takes us back to now in the past. >> Yeah. But we're in the present. So the numbers are not adding up anymore. No. Right. The hard thing though is like as we both know like I feel like there always is creative software fixes that sort of come about like >> I'm betting on Bitcoin devs ingenuity. The fact that I still have any Bitcoin is a testament to my belief in these devs who mostly don't like me now uh getting their act together.

>> I don't think they liked you for a couple of years. >> So they're extra mad. But uh I am betting that we find a creative uh solution. But really like the fundamental facts are what they are. I think this is going to happen in 10 years. >> Satoshi's coins can't move without a forcable basically confiscation by the community which is unprecedented. We have to rip out all the cryptography in Bitcoin which is unprecedented. We have to get every single Bitcoiner to make a transaction on chain like and for we haven't even talked about like okay well does it find out about a box like okay so you need hundreds of millions of transactions like how long does that take so >> is that even possible

>> it is it just takes months if it's even ordinary >> and that's assuming no other transactions on the network. >> Yeah. So it's like the only transactions are happening are migration transactions. nothing else is happening off of them. >> So like the this is by far the biggest problem Bitcoin's ever faced ever by 10 orders of magnitude. Like compare like SegWit or to this completely irrelevant nonsense right? >> Yeah. >> Like we spent 5 years or seven years building Lightning. That was the developer priority for >> man. Do you remember how much funding those lightning labs companies got or like years ago?

>> I funded some of them. that they didn't work. >> No, I mean at the time it made sense as an investment. It's more hindsight. >> This is the biggest problem Bitcoin's ever faced. This is like Godzilla compared to an ant. Okay. >> And uh no one wants to acknowledge that it's problem because even speaking that out loud, it's like saying Lord Voldemort's name. Like it's dangerous, right? Like >> shall not say his name. >> It's the problem that must not be named. If you say it out loud, the investors might panic. >> Yeah. which is I think is fine, right?

Uh probably the investors should know about this. Yeah. >> Uh so that we can mobilize and figure it out instead of being like the turkey the day before Thanksgiving that gets suddenly executed cuz that's what's going to happen otherwise. Oh. So Nick, what how do you like score the preparedness intensity of the Bitcoin core developers and actually fixing this issue? >> One out of 100. >> Wow. Yeah. So, you fail. You fail at 50%. Right. Anything below that is an F.

>> So, they're just not talking about it. What's the >> They mostly don't think it's real or they won't acknowledge that it's real. They >> And who who's who's they? Is it like one person? Is it 100 people? Like, >> I I read all the discussions on the mailing list about it. There's one named Bip that has to do with Quantum, which is by an outsider. It's very nice guy. Hunter Beast. He's not like part of the inner club, right? >> I think I listened to his podcast prepping for this. Yeah, >> Beast is awesome and I hope that he succeeds. His BIP, BIP 360, is a a very first step in many many steps that have to happen.

>> But even his BIP is not being really considered. And you know how it works in Bitcoin. You need the high priests to endorse the Bitcoin conclave, right? So the council of Trent for bitcoiners right come together. >> So you need >> So is it blood sacrifice then bip then? How does it how does it work when you walk up? >> I don't know how it works exactly. Arcane play Greg Maxwell and maybe Adam Back needs to be involved and uh >> so if I point Blake ask ask Greg and Adam they would just say quantum's not real like >> um

>> I know you can't speak for them but like obviously >> says that it's real but it's under control and that I should stop asking questions. >> That's never a good answer. >> That's his view genuinely and he's been like subweeting me a lot. It's like, dude, I'm not your enemy here. I'm actually your friend. I just don't get why arguing against it like is the correct approach. The Bitcoin dubs, as I said, are not experts in physics, which neither I am I, but I know that I'm not. And so then I wouldn't talk to a bunch of physicists, right? So that's the difference. Um, I am a generalist. I am an investor. It's my job to price risk.

>> It's not their job to price risk. They don't do that for a living. They design software which needs to be like really ironclad. But it's not their job to put a dollar value on the probability of something happening in 10 years. That's our job. But their software isn't ironclad if it's at risk for quantum. So they're normally very paranoid. They're paranoid in Bitcoin against all kinds of stuff like they won't use certain dependencies in their code because they think, well, what if someone attacked Bitcoin through one of these libraries, you know? So like they're very paranoid and they rolled their own cryptography back in the day actually uh their own implementation um because they didn't want to trust

another library. Right? So like the Bitcoin level of paranoia and development is real and yet they're not paranoid about the biggest thing which is as it turns out the cryptography doesn't work anymore. So that's weird. If somebody like we have a lot of new actors in Bitcoin like you know we have the DATs we have the ETFs we have the banks we have new large holders sovereign nations the US government all these new groups of people generally the financial actors won't make changes they'll just sell but if they wanted to create their own quantum bitcoin core dev group and they wanted to you know produce these bips and move them forward could they work around these high religious priests? Yeah, it's a really

good question and uh I don't know if you read my short piece of fiction. >> I only read non-fiction, Nick. >> I know, but I was really hoping you'd read my story. This whole thing is just a pretext for my creative endeavors. Uh I'm a frustrated writer. You're doing all the quantum work to promote the books. So, in the book, I'll spoil it. um the big economic actors get together and they sign a letter saying we need to fork out the Satoshi coins.

>> Wow. >> And that actually is persuasive. Uh in the story, I won't tell you what happens. It's very exciting. >> Do you know I'm going to read it? >> Yeah. And the story doesn't get implemented in time, but uh I just spoiled it. Um but in in that story, this is actually what I think is going to happen. Um, I think they will decide, uh, okay, the devs aren't really moving on this. We need to kind of mobilize the community cuz these are these financial institutions are fiduciaries. >> They, um, don't want to be sued by the people that bought their Bitcoin ETF. >> Mhm.

>> Because something terrible happened at Bitcoin, right? So they I think will eventually start to agitate not in a very active way but just quietly but uh with conviction and saying hey guys um I don't know what's happening in Bitcoin dove world but you need to freeze the coins at a minimum. It's kind of crazy when I think of fiduciary duty, I think of like an active manager making investment decisions, right? I don't think of an ETF with a single asset, but >> but there's there's this is why they have risk disclosures in the perspectus.

>> But and Cruso Black Rockck for instance disclosed the risk recently. So people so we know that they know what's going on. >> But uh what none of them have done is say okay well we need to do something about this. But >> I think it'll happen. I think uh they probably feel very strongly um not speaking specifically that this needs to be addressed. >> You you go through a lot of really interesting like geopolitical scenarios like North Korea, China, US government and I think the last one is like a US company, tech company like developing quantum getting the coins and what happens your what is your most probable scenario of those four?

number one most likely but I don't think this is the most likely of all like I don't think this is 51% likely but I think the modal probability as in the one with the fattest you know part of the distribution uh or tallest peak is that a private firm let's say there's no fork right so let's say we don't collectively steal the Satoshi coins >> it would be that a private firm at the behest of the US government requisitions the coins and gives them to the US government >> so like IBM Microsoft Google and they do this because they believe that China's about to do it and so the government authorizes them to do that.

>> That seems like the easiest option. >> So that's what my story is about. >> Okay. >> Yeah, you did read my story. I'm very upset. >> I read the other parts. >> Yeah, I mean so you read the non-fiction not cool stuff, you know, like so I think that's going to happen if there's no fork because I think the US is probably the bleeding edge of quantum development. I know that there are efforts underway to do this to build a atscale quantum computer within the next five years. >> Those are underway. Whether they will work, I don't know, but there's hundreds of millions of dollars out there that think they will work. Right? So, real people put their careers on the line saying, I think these guys are going to do it. They're going to build it quantum mainframe, right? They'll build an early

version of a quantum chip and it'll be sufficient. Uh, so people think that'll that'll happen. >> It it's I mean in your article you talk about like North Korea stealing the coins or like China stealing the coins. It I could see China being pretty far ahead. >> I mean the value of quantum which we haven't spoken about is is very strategic. So the quantum is most valuable to governments that want to do code breaking right. It's also val valuable to like physicists and chemists that want to come up with new battery types or superconductors or they just want to do simulation of quantum physics. Like that's actually why

quantum computers exist in the first place. You didn't mention AI at all. Like is quantum not helpful for AI development? >> People think it could be, but we don't know for sure yet. >> Okay. >> Um there's some stuff that we think like maybe it's good for portfolio simulation. It feels like a tool the way you're describing it, not like a >> I mean it's just a new genre of computing that uh you can do stuff that you can't do otherwise. Like what we know for sure it can do is simulate physics particles cuz it's built of physics stuff as opposed to computers which are built of abstractions.

>> Yeah. >> Um that that's why it was even Feainman even proposed quantum computing back in the day. But yeah, China is probably investing in quantum more actively than the US. However, I think the US is just better at technology. >> So like at the government level, China's investing more, but at the corporate level, the US >> at the private level, there's more. Yeah, but it probably it's roughly equal when you net it out. >> So if you want to be bullish, Bitcoin quantum, you you're making a bet that US firms are further ahead than China on quantum.

>> We should really hope that that's the case. It's so hard to figure out if that's true. China's so secretive. >> So that's the thing. It's kind of like in 1939 when we were and I were alive. >> I just read the maniac book with John Bon Newman. It was great. >> That was a great recommendation. I actually then I read actually a couple books based after that about the development of the atomic bomb. It's very uncanny. >> So you read my book, Rex, but I didn't read your book. It's >> okay. It's okay. Um, people stop publishing about nuclear physics because they want to keep the secrets right?

>> And I would say we're in the equivalent of 1939 in quantum time, which is we know that it's possible now. They demonstrated nuclear fishision in Germany in 1938, I want to say. And then there was a race, which is get enough file material together and find out how to assemble it into a bomb. So that's what we spent the next six years doing, right? And no one was publishing during that time. Although all the theoretical physicists knew was possible. That's where we are. And no one's going to publish their papers when we're getting close and close. There are already quantum papers that are not being published that I'm aware of. So they they'll No, that's that's a great point.

So they'll publish like like within Microsoft or IBM, but only to like their core team. >> Yeah. >> Or Okay. And maybe they'll share with the US government. DARPA has an initiative, quantum benchmarking initiative. Uh NIST uh the standard setting body has already said government agencies have to phase out quantum vulnerable computation by 2030 and the government saying no agency can use what is NIST National Institute of Science and Technology. Okay. So this is an official governmentwide directive. So by 2030 >> by 2030 and by 2035 it's like strictly prohibited the same government that runs the DMV like that

>> that very same that very same. So in some ways they're really >> they're pretty aggressive. >> Yeah that's yeah in some ways they're really awful but in uh I'm glad that we've got >> it's an aggressive timeline is to say that's that's the thing that kind of sparked my interest. I'm like, hang on, 2030 is like really really soon. But what like if like just walking through the theory like if IBM or Microsoft or Google or whoever develops quantum the government comes to them like is Bitcoin like first on their list of things to fix or probably not like so encrypted communications like at that point like so let's say IBM builds a quantum computer that has 2,000 logical cubits that's like roughly the amount that we

think is needed. Your article says 2030 I think right or 2130 or something. >> There's not like a specific number. It's like basically it keeps coming down because we develop more efficient ways to do computation. Probably it'll keep coming down. But right now the state of the art for RSA um like the normal RSA standard we use is around 2,000 logical cubits. Okay. >> So if they go to the US government say, "Hey, we built this thing." the government will probably start using it to crack data that we stole from China, right? So encrypted data that was encrypted with AES or with elliptic curve cryptography or RSA, those are all crackable at that point. So they'll probably do that, but also they'll probably start to get very worried if the administration in 2029 or

30 or 32 cares about Bitcoin. Probably will, right? the government probably has Bitcoin at that point still. They might say, "Well, IBM, how far behind you is China?" And IBM would be like, "Ah, two weeks." Probably they're going to steal my secrets. >> They're going to steal our secrets, man. They've infiltrated all the AI labs. They're infiltrated the quantum guys, too. >> Yeah. I just feel like they're more interested in protecting our nukes than they are in protecting Bitcoin. Like, sure, it's on the list, but it's just >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the nukes are probably already stuff, but um you know, they'll probably look at the data going back and forth between the satellites

cuz that might actually not be upgradable, you know. >> But yeah, they they'll probably care about quantum. So, my guess is they'll probably tell IBM or whoever, would you just steal the bitcoins, too? like on the downtime like on the weekend or something >> at 6 p.m. >> idling just steal and give it to us. >> Like if that happens it's crazy because without like if people don't know why the coins are moving the price is going to crash.

>> Well, so they have to steal the coins but they also have to like put out a PR or tweet like 5 seconds later. >> Yeah. So you steal all the coins, but you don't broadcast the expenditure, >> right? So you do reverse engineer. >> So people wouldn't know they stole the coins. >> Yeah. I mean, they could be stolen now and we wouldn't know, right? So you could reverse engineer all the private keys from the public keys cuz remember Satoshi's address is like 40,000. They're >> I didn't know that was a real Okay. They're in 50 Bitcoin lots cuz what happened was Satoshi and others mined the coins 50 BTC a piece block back in the day.

>> Didn't move them ever. They're just sitting there. All these different addresses. It would take you a long time to grind through this. >> Is there a scenario where the government asks a tech company to steal them privately like you're mentioning and just never tell anybody? >> No. Because you have to broadcast cuz let's say you think China's about to do it. Then you have to broadcast the spend on chain. >> Why? Everyone knows because otherwise China can do it. >> Even if IBM, Microsoft steal it proactively. Well, to actually effectuate the theft, you need to broadcast the spend.

>> Okay. So, I'll know. >> Yeah. >> Damn. And you talked to anybody at IBM or Microsoft or Google? And >> I've talked to folks that have left those uh organizations. Yeah. >> It's the other thing that's interesting is like relative value flows. Like I'm very bullish on crypto. I'm very bullish on AI, but like the marginal buyer. Would you rather buy Bitcoin or would you rather buy AI quantum juggernaut Microsoft removal? >> Well, yeah. And you know, >> who also don't have the risk?

>> You don't you don't want to worry that your wealth stored in this thing is going to disappear with a maybe a 2% tail risk or maybe a 10%, right? We don't know what the risk is. >> Whatever it is is uncomfortable, right? So, this is when I make the case of the Bitcoin developers. I'm like, okay, so you're we're in a flood zone right here, right? you presumably or whoever owns this place has an insurance against that, right? Even if it's just a 1% chance of a flood, you still buy the insurance. In fact, you need it to get a mortgage, I think, is how it works, right? Depends what zone you're in, but Yeah.

>> So, most of flood zones. >> I don't know. Actually, I don't know if I have flooded. I flipped into this recently. Depends what zone you're in. It's really confusing. >> Yeah. All right. Well, whatever. We got the analogy. We're in Miami. It's probably going to flood. We don't know when. Maybe it has already. Maybe next week. Who knows? You buy the insurance. Why are the big So, why are the Bitcoin developers not spending 1% of their time or 5% of their time, whatever it is, buying the insurance as in working on the new cryptography developing social consensus. This is how we're going to do the fork. Right now, we're uninsured.

That's not good. I don't think that's good from the capital allocator standpoint. I think they're nervous increasingly and I think in 2026 this will become an undeniable issue. >> It just seems so much easier and I haven't sold any Bitcoin given this risk and I'm bullish on us figuring it out, but it just seems easier to just sell and buy a different coin. >> Well, probably all coins are vulnerable. Um, but other coins have more defined governance. >> Well, they don't have the Satoshi risk.

Some ETH probably has some of that actually. >> I'm not buying any ETH right now. >> Any old coin that's been around and some people died or lost their like that that's a risk. >> ETH I think is maybe more exposed in some ways because of how addresses work. >> Mhm. >> So it's very common to reuser address and ETH. Right. It seems though the Ethereum core developers are more actionable though in terms of potentially figuring out a solution than the Bitcoin core does.

>> Oh yeah. I mean so Bitcoin is the most exposed because there's the most inertia in Bitcoin governance. We've done two upgrades in the last 10 years. Two 10 years. So ETH does hard forks like all the time, right? Salana. I don't even know if they tell people what they're doing. You know, like >> upgrade your node. >> Yeah. I'm just like, "All right, do it." Sal there's like 10 guys you have to call and they do it right. >> I'm sure someone would debate you on this. >> What happened? >> The point is this is actually this is me praising texting me right now.

>> There's actually 15 validators. >> Um, dude, you know, those guys have people that are in charge basically and they can say, "Okay, well, Quantum actually is a little concerning. Metallic already agreed. Salana Foundation already started piloting post. It >> it just seems like there'll be a value flow from Bitcoin to Salana and ETH considering they have credible paths to address it. >> Well, and this is why I think the Bitcoiners should devise their own path. Yeah. So, cuz certainly it's going to be very hard for any blockchain to upgrade and postquantum. Very hard. You're ripping out the core of the system, which is the cryptography. Uh, but you you're gonna have an easier time doing it if you start now.

>> I feel like if the Bitcoin core developers took it seriously, messaged it, and I don't know, started the process, Bitcoin's price would be like 25% higher. >> I think Quantum is weighing on the price. Yeah. And I'm not sorry that I might have contributed to that cuz I think it's an investment today in a better future. Mhm. >> So, if whatever I've written has influenced some people, I don't know if it has. >> I'm sure it has. We're sitting here right now talking about it. >> I believe in biting the bullet always as opposed to ignoring a bad thing.

>> You had a really good line in your part two post, the non-fiction one, and it was uh something along the lines of I prefer biting the bullet now versus pleasant fantasies or something like that. It was great. >> Yeah. I mean, most Bitcoin dabs unfortunately are in ignorance is bliss world. >> Mhm. >> Like many of them think quantum computing isn't real, for instance. They don't recognize that a lot of things changed in 2025, which is my whole post is like 10 things changed. These are the things. >> Yeah.

>> This happened, that happened, that happened. They're not paying attention. >> From their standpoint, they're like, "Oh, this kind of seems like a scam. I know a lot of people invested in these quantum meme stocks. So, I'm just going to put that in the same category as altcoins, which was we know are all scams. And so, because those are scams and they're kind of like this thing, then it must be a scam. And so, anybody that's investing it uh is a scam artist and anyone that is thinks the investment is real is being tricked by scammers. So, that's their that's how they think about it. But we don't need I my argument isn't defeated by uh the fact that many quantum stocks or companies are scams.

>> We only need one of them to not be a scam. >> But like the see >> for the threat to be real. >> I don't even know if we need them at all. Like why why can't we >> doesn't even have to Yeah. All the companies who go to zero and maybe the government develops tech. >> Yeah. Like Microsoft, IBM, whatever. like Betti and I andQ and Dwave could absolutely fail and like it doesn't matter. Someone's all we need is for one guy to build a powerful quantum computer. >> What was the most credible counterargument to your entire thesis that you found after publishing it?

>> There were none. >> I know it sounds crazy cuz it's like Nick, you're like you did a philosophy degree. You meant to be a serious person like but there were none. Nobody tried. >> You mentioned quantum mechanics not being real. >> Well, yeah. I mean, that wouldn't defeat the thesis, but also our phones wouldn't work if quantum mechanics wasn't real. >> How is quantum mechanics not real if IBM and Microsoft and these folks already have small test pilots of of these machines working? >> I mean, quantum mechanics real. >> Yeah.

>> A lot of the systems that we depend on for modernity incorporate quantum mechanics into the >> Okay. So it's not a credible counterargument is what you're saying. >> The only one the only credible counterargument there would be two. You could say one uh when it comes down to it Bitcoin developers are going to figure it out and we don't need to have the full answer today cuz maybe it's a problem for 10 years time. That's not a very bitcoiny way of dealing with problems though, right? That'd be the first time we tackled something that way in very lacadasical manner. The other way is well uh we think you know okay we have to grow logical cubits by three orders of magnitude and fidelity by several orders of mag and physical cubits by x many orders of mag and

coherence has to be two orders of mag. We think that's a 2050 thing. But even if it's a 2050 thing we still need to figure out what we're doing with Satoshi's coins. >> Yes. Yes. >> So it's not really a solution >> talking about it today if it's a 2050 thing. I just like the first personal problem I have with the thinking is like even if they figure it out tomorrow or in 2050, you still have to figure out what you're doing with the coins. >> Yeah. The coins. And this is people say, "Oh, well, all the banks are going to go down and nothing's going to work and the planes are going to fall out of the sky and you know, every database will fail."

That's not true. And you know why? Cuz there were people that managed those databases. Every one of those databases run by a corporation or a person and they can change it. >> Bitcoin is a very unique kind of a database where we replicate it amongst thousands or millions of people and then we have this like real arcane way of deciding what the truth of the database is called proof of work. Bitcoin is different, right? So people constantly say this to me. They say, "Well, don't worry about quantum cuz like if it destroys Bitcoin, it destroys everything else." That's not true. Bitcoin is actually the only thing that can upgrade along with some like really old school antiquated like physical devices where

the cryptography is flashed into the memory and can't ever be upgraded because it's physical, right? So, Bitcoin is in a very unique class of things that can't upgrade easily. >> When I was doing >> and banks and whatever, they they'll upgrade the Fed, they'll upgrade the database, the government's told them. So maybe this is high on the list for an IBM and Microsoft considering everything else can be upgraded relatively easily. >> Well, they would need to be s they need the government to sign off on it >> on a like a no action letter. >> Yeah. But I looked into it. There's like you can look at maritime law like uh there's I spent a lot of time reading about whether people that

recovered coins from ancient shipwrecks were able to claim the coins. Were they able to? >> There was a famous one in Florida in the 70s, 80s. He spent 16 years looking for this. >> You wrote about this >> and his wife and his son died in the in the course of this. Uh so it was a really like Foustian thing like he really suffered to get and then he got he found the shipwreck and he dug up all the coins, $500 million worth of Spanish gold. God from the 1600s and Spain sued him over it and he won but it cost him everything. So he kept the money though.

>> Yeah, that was the last time. And ever since then the law is really clear actually. It just doesn't belong to you. Even if it's the company doesn't exist anymore. The empire has fallen. Where does it go to? It belongs to Spain. Typically Spain will really aggressively assert their right or whatever successor nation that >> Well, that's not like mega positive for a IBM or Microsoft to go looking for old coins. >> Yeah. Basically, there's one kind of exception which is a little ship name of the Titanic. Heard that.

>> Oh, starring Leonard DiCaprio Winslet. >> Yeah, that's right. So, the Titanic is considered a salvage in possession of a specific company that was set up to salvage the Titanic. >> Okay. >> So, you could set a submersible down. It's like little claws like get the jewelry or like whatever. >> Not with an Xbox controller, but a real submarine. >> Yeah. Like what was the the the thing that she Rose tossed into the water at the end of the movie? >> Oh, god. Whatever that was. So, they went and got that. Okay. And this company was allowed to exclusively salvage the wreck. Um, and no other company was allowed to because they were doing a good job of managing it.

>> But they weren't presumed to be the owners of the wreck even though they have access to it exclusively. >> So this is called salvage and possession. So this is like a doctrine that exists. So probably whoever uh requisitions the Satoshi coins for covers them would not be considered the true owner of those coins legally under US law as far as I can tell. But they might be entitled to a finder fee. >> And so but the problem is that how do you after the fact prove that you're Satoshi and that the you know you're the like cuz cryptography doesn't mean anything anymore. It's crazy thinking through like if it's bullish or bearish, the the US government having the

strategic reserve, any other Bitcoin it confiscates the next decade plus possibly Satoshi's coins. Like there's a pretty big incentive for them to either make sure this really works or to kill the network if they wanted to. >> Well, the US government has a huge incentive to develop quantum computing anyway just so we can spy on China, right? And decrypt all of their secrets that we've been harvesting, right? As a side, yeah, like if we think Bitcoin is exposed to China stealing all the stoi coins, we should preemptively steal them.

>> Feels like the imitation game round two. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Really is. >> Damn. Anything we didn't talk about that we missed. >> I'm glad we got to the fire points of maritime law. >> Yeah, me too. I should we do we should do a separate pot just on ships. And I a lot of research. So basically, as it turns out, like even if you find a shipwreck today, you're totally boned and you're not allowed to keep the coins. It's very sad. >> I feel like if a if a Microsoft or IBM got like five or 10% of Bitcoin, like not or coins, like not the end of the world for protecting.

>> Yeah. And actually, I'm probably okay with a domestic firm or the government getting the coins. Like I've never been of the school of thought that they're out of circulation. Like those are the supply of Bitcoin is 21 million. It's not 19.1 million, right? >> I just like Bitcoin is going to try and redefine it as that. But that's not what it was. >> But even if like North Korea or China got the coins like how would they even sell that many? Like I don't like you block a couple key exchanges and like >> I think North Korea tends to hold their Bitcoin, right? It's >> kind of bullish.

>> And like sometimes sell it off. Yeah. So, like even if North Korea or China got it, I can see the reasoning for not as a community stealing or freezing the coins. >> I just don't understand how they'd ever sell it. Like they're kind of effectively locked based on the rate at which they can sell. >> Yeah. And it's think about like uh the gold, you know, we Europe went to the new world and we discovered all the gold. Well, frankly, we stole it. I say we I don't know. They >> You're grouping yourself in here. They sold they sold the gold and then there was a lot of inflation Europe for the next hundred years right it was actually not that much like 1.5% inflation on average for 100 years not that much inflation

>> but they didn't sell the gold you know they kept it right it became part of their treasury or whatever actually I think the UK did actually sell their gold not too long ago so >> what a great move >> if this happened wouldn't China this would just be a way of accelerating sovereign adoption >> yeah It's the problem is just that it's our adversaries that have it. >> It'd be nice if like the Bitcoin strategic reserve was legisl like long-term legislation. This way if the comp if the tech companies ever requisitions Toshi's coins, they're permanently locked in the government.

>> Yeah. It should be enshrined and the government should say as part of the deal, okay, we commission this company to steal the coins. We're going to hold on to these coins. Mhm. >> That's what they should do. But we don't really know where the reserve is or >> I mean selling 10% of what they steal. So you you mentioned Satoshi's coins is what 8% of the network or something. >> So there's like roughly a million that are presumed to be Satoshi's but there's another 600 700,000 that are early miners that are in the same category. >> Got it. So >> it's like 1.7 million >> like 100 200 billion. So I don't Yeah, that's kind of tough. But so if if Microsoft or IBM gets 10 20 billion like not the end of the world.

>> No they they kind of a lot of they deserve that as why right >> and it's not hard to sell that to a sovereign nation like you could >> yeah this quantum was expensive to build in the first place. So Bitcoin is accelerating the development of quantum for sure. It's happening today. >> Yeah. Damn. So you haven't So should I ask you in 6 months if you've sold any Bitcoin? >> Yeah. I mean I can tell you what's going to happen. the developers going to keep grumbling and they're going to keep doing nothing and criticizing me and uh I'm going to be increasingly irate as time goes on.

>> It's like the fifth time they've canceled you. What's what's left? >> They just have like a recurring thread. >> Just a calendar invite on Outlife every couple. >> Nick, thanks so much for coming on, man. Really appreciate it. >> Yeah. >> You're now plugged in to the Deli podcast.