The internet is laughing at El Salvador’s ‘quantum-safe’ bitcoin
Social media has been laughing at reports that El Salvador has split its bitcoin (BTC) holdings across 14 addresses, allegedly to protect against quantum hacks.
The country’s Bitcoin Office, managed by Max Keiser’s colorful wife Stacy Herbert, claimed that the move was preparation for “potential developments in quantum computing.”
However, few people were able to take the announcement seriously.
“El Salvador prepping to sell their bitcoin!” screamed influencer Jacob King, calling the quantum argument “laughable and a terrible lie.”
Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn disagreed that splitting BTC holdings into multiple wallets and ending the reuse of single wallets would provide protection against quantum attacks.
King then deleted one post claiming that one of El Salvador’s new addresses weren’t quantum resistant. Then King proceeded to block Thorn out of spite, making King’s initial claim even more hilarious.
Read more: Microsoft’s new state of matter is a quantum threat to bitcoin
Technically a real defense, but still funny
Thorn correctly noted that certain types of wallets are more vulnerable to quantum computing than others. For example, addresses might be vulnerable if they’re frequently reused or have unspent transaction outputs in a P2PK format.
Nevertheless, the wassie community logged the overall incident as hilariously memorable.
Although El Salvador’s distribution of BTC to new wallets is technically helpful for limited types of quantum computing, the wallets have very little chance of defending against an actual quantum breakthrough.
Indeed, if a quantum computer were to gain the ability to break SHA256 cryptography, BTC wallets would probably rank among the tiniest of its multi-trillion dollar targets.
In any case, investors may move holdings around for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with quantum cybersecurity, including changing hardware, sending BTC to cold storage, or upgrading to multiple signatures for better security.
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