Satoshi's 1.1M $BTC Goes Quantum-Proof or Goes Cold, CZ Tells Bitcoin 🧊

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, said on the Galaxy Brains podcast that the roughly 1.1 million $BTC mined by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 and 2010 should be frozen under a future quantum-resistant Bitcoin protocol if the coins remain unmoved after a 6-to-12-month grace period set by the community. Zhao, who no longer manages daily operations at Binance, framed the proposal as a question for Bitcoin users rather than a personal plan, arguing that quantum-resistant encryption algorithms already exist but require coordinated adoption. The Patoshi pattern, traced by researcher Sergio Demian Lerner, attributes the hoard to Nakamoto; at Bitcoin's market price near $63,244, that stash is worth roughly $70 billion. Zhao said the final decision should be made through community signaling, not by him, and pushed back on coverage claiming he would personally freeze Satoshi's address, noting on X on June 20, 2026 that distinguishing Nakamoto's wallets from other early miners is difficult. Google's Quantum AI team published research in March estimating that breaking the cryptography securing digital signatures could require fewer than 500,000 qubits and run in minutes, well below earlier projections; more than a third of all Bitcoin had revealed a public key on-chain by that month, leaving those addresses exposed. Zhao's framing aligns with BIP-361, a draft by Jameson Lopp and five other researchers that would block sends to vulnerable addresses about three years after activation and void legacy signatures two years later; the proposal cites Nakamoto directly, quoting him: "Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone."

The same coins are at the center of a separate dispute: an anonymous plaintiff and two Wyoming LLCs are contesting a New York abandoned-property lawsuit in an attempt to claim 39,069 idle addresses, including those holding the Satoshi coins, a fight a Galaxy report by Alex Thorn has cast doubt on. During the same podcast, Zhao argued that the dollar amount is the difference between today's market cycle and the bear markets of 2018 and 2022, citing a "180-degree shift" in U.S. crypto policy over the past four years and pointing to spot $BTC ETF approvals from firms including BlackRock alongside $BNB ETF listings as evidence that institutional adoption has peaked. He also weighed in on real-world assets, saying he was skeptical about the space roughly a year to a year and a half ago but expressed surprise at its growth across stablecoins, oil futures, and AI stocks. On artificial intelligence, Zhao struck a sharper tone, warning that "the cryptocurrency sector, no matter what it does, doesn't have the power to wipe out or destroy our civilization" while AI "has the power to completely end human civilization" if used carelessly, and predicted that AI agents will eventually book travel and make payments on behalf of humans.