Bitcoin’s ‘your keys, your coins’ promise just got an expiry date from a new developer proposal
The post Bitcoin’s ‘your keys, your coins’ promise just got an expiry date from a new developer proposal appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Bitcoin BTC$73,962.18 was built on a promise that no one can touch your coins without your private key. No government, no bank, nobody. That promise is now, for the first time in Bitcoin’s 16-year history, being challenged from the developer community itself, as a part of measures to build defenses against future quantum computers that could compromise Bitcoin’s blockchain and steal your coins. The proposal Jameson Loop, one of the outspoken bitcoin contributors, and other cryptographers, have proposed a move that could force bitcoin holders to migrate their coins to new quantum-resistant addresses or face having their coins frozen permanently by the network itself. In that scenario, holders would technically still “own” the coins, but lose the ability to move them. It is called Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-361 and was updated in Bitcoin’s official proposal repository Tuesday with the title “Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset.” This comes as a recently released Google report warned that a sufficiently powerful quantum machine could require significantly less firepower to compromise the Bitcoin blockchain than initially estimated. This prompted some observers to cite 2029 as the quantum deadline for bitcoin. To understand the need to freeze coins, you need to know what it is protecting against. Every Bitcoin wallet is secured by a form of cryptography called ECDSA, or Elliptic Curve Digital Signature algorithm. Think of it as a lock on your wallet. When you set up a wallet, two keys are generated: Private key, which is a unique password used to prove that you own the coins you are spending. Then there is a public key derived from the private key. This public key helps receive funds, verify transaction signatures, and ensure security without revealing the owner’s private key. Here is the problem: your public key is revealed on the blockchain,…
Filed under: News - @ April 15, 2026 6:27 am