Dormant Bitcoin Dilemma: Critical Debate Ignites After Google’s Quantum Computing Warning Share: BitcoinWorld Dormant Bitcoin Dilemma: Critical Debate Ignites After Google’s Quantum Computing Warning A critical debate over the fate of approximately four million dormant Bitcoin is intensifying across the cryptocurrency community following a significant report from Google on quantum computing advancements. The discussion centers on whether the Bitcoin protocol should proactively protect these idle assets from potential future threats or maintain its foundational principle of absolute immutability, leaving security responsibility with individual holders. This debate strikes at the core of Bitcoin’s philosophical and technical identity. The Quantum Computing Catalyst and the Dormant Bitcoin Problem Google’s recent research paper on quantum error correction marked a notable, though incremental, step toward more stable quantum systems. While a practical quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin’s Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) remains years or decades away, the theoretical threat has reignited long-standing concerns. Specifically, analysts point to the vast pool of dormant Bitcoin—coins that have not moved from their addresses for many years—as a potential systemic risk. On-chain data firms estimate this dormant supply at around 4 million BTC, worth hundreds of billions of dollars. A significant portion of these coins resides in early “pay-to-public-key-hash” (P2PKH) addresses, which are considered more vulnerable to a future quantum computing attack than modern, more complex scripts. The central fear is not an immediate breach, but the market catastrophe that could ensue if such an attack became feasible, flooding the market with coins their original owners may have lost access to. Woo’s Warning: A Call for Protocol-Level Protection Prominent on-chain analyst Willy Woo has emerged as a leading voice advocating for preemptive action. Woo argues that the Bitcoin network has a duty to its users. He proposes a two-pronged approach: first, identifying and potentially “freezing” vulnerable