On-chain analyst James Check has pushed back against claims that a quantum-enabled sale of Satoshi-era Bitcoin would represent an existential market shock, arguing that the likely sell-side pressure is far smaller than the headline numbers suggest. In an April 23 report titled 'Selling Satoshi's Stack,' Check examined the debate over whether Bitcoin should freeze quantum-vulnerable coins if a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) becomes viable.
The discussion has intensified around older Bitcoin outputs whose public keys are exposed, including coins from Bitcoin's earliest years that many market participants associate with Satoshi Nakamoto. The number that keeps recurring in these discussions is 6.9 million BTC with exposed public keys, and Check's argument is that treating this as a single, unified threat misrepresents the actual risk.
Breaking Down the 6.9 Million Figure
Check splits the exposure into three groups. Around 214,000 BTC sits in Taproot addresses, a newer protocol whose owners are almost certainly alive and capable of moving funds if a post-quantum solution appears. Much of it is tied up in inscriptions, meaning a quantum attacker would sometimes be cracking cryptography to steal a digital image and a few thousand satoshis. The bigger pool, roughly 4.996 million BTC, sits in reused addresses. Most of this belongs to exchanges and custodians. 'Exchanges and custodians have a duty to protect clients' funds,' Check wrote, confident that institutions like Binance and Coinbase are already working on solutions. What remains, and what Check considers the only credible target, is the 1.716 million BTC in Satoshi-era Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses, assumed by most to be permanently lost coins from Bitcoin's earliest blocks.
How Much Damage Could a Sale Actually Do?
Check took the worst case at face value and asked whether Bitcoin's market could absorb it. His answer, backed by several different metrics, is essentially yes. His 'revived supply' data, tracking coins dormant for months re-entering circulation, shows the market routinely absorbs 10,000 to 30,000 BTC per day during bull runs. Selling every P2PK coin would be the equivalent of 60 to 90 days of that activity. 'There's no doubt that an additional 1.716M BTC market sold will have an appreciable and depressing force on the price,' Check stated while flatly rejecting the claim that it would be fatal.
He also endorsed the so-called 'hourglass' proposal from BIP-360 discussions, capping P2PK transactions at one per block. With around 38,000 P2PK outputs, that would exhaust them in about 264 days, which would be about the same window everyone else would need to migrate under a post-quantum upgrade. Check concluded with a philosophical question: given Bitcoin works best if widely held, would a situation where Satoshi's coins end up distributed to buyers instead of being frozen forever really be the disaster people are treating it as?
