Cory Fields, a Bitcoin software developer at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, presented three thought experiments designed to discourage the theft of bitcoin through quantum computers. His mechanisms rely on “quantum landmines,” a staked auction and a sats auction triggered by attempts to spend legacy bitcoin, all of which could potentially be implemented through a soft fork. Under these models, an attacker would have to provide an equivalent amount of quantum-safe BTC as collateral, locking both the stolen funds and the collateral for a specified period. Fields acknowledged that collateral ratios, auction rules, the treatment of losing bids and the distribution of recovered funds remain unresolved. Alice & Bob also estimated that a quantum computer using 29,588 cat qubits could crack a Bitcoin private key in about 62 minutes, while analyst James Check has challenged claims of a catastrophic market collapse.
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