According to enterprise capitalist Nic Carter, major Bitcoin-holding institutions may eventually lose patience with Bitcoin developers for not addressing quantum computing concerns quickly enough.
“I believe the foremost institutions that now exist in Bitcoin are going to get fed up and begin shedding the developers and hiring recent developers,” Carter said during Thursday's Bits and Bips podcast episode.
“I believe the developers will proceed to do nothing,” Carter said.
Source: Cointelegraph
“If you’re BlackRock and you’ve gotten billions of dollars of client assets on this matter and the issues aren’t being addressed, what selection do you’ve gotten?” he said.
A “corporate takeover” is a possibility, says Carter
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, holds around 761,801 Bitcoin (BTC), value about $50.15 billion on the time of publication. This corresponds to around 3.62% of the whole supply of Bitcoin.
Carter warned that a “corporate takeover” would occur if Bitcoin developers didn’t quickly adopt quantum-resistant cryptography, arguing that it could be “a successful one.”
Nic Carter joined the Bits and Bops podcast on Thursday together with three other crypto executives. Source: Laura Shin
Zero Knowledge Consulting founder Austin Campbell expressed an analogous opinion. “If there’s a structural problem here and so they have a broad view, sooner or later they will probably be asked to talk up,” Campbell said.
Carter has recently been vocal concerning the threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin. He said on January 21 that Bitcoin's “mysterious” price underperformance was “attributable to quantum effects” and was “the one story that matters this yr.”
According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin is trading at $70,281 on the time of publication, down 26.25% over the past 30 days.
However, not everyone agrees that institutions would attempt to influence the network. Ram Ahluwahlia, founding father of Lumida Wealth Management, said that enormous institutions are “passive” investors in Bitcoin. “They usually are not activists,” he said.
The industry is split over the urgency of Bitcoin quantum risk
This comes because the broader industry continues to debate how imminent the threat to Bitcoin actually is.
Capriole Investments founder Charles Edwards sees quantum computing as a possible “existential threat” to Bitcoin and argues that an upgrade is now needed to strengthen network security.
Meanwhile, Christopher Bendiksen, head of Bitcoin research at CoinShares, argued in a post on Friday that only 10,230 out of 1.63 million Bitcoin are in wallet addresses with publicly visible cryptographic keys which can be vulnerable to a quantum computer attack.
Some Bitcoiners, like Strategy CEO Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back, imagine quantum threats are overblown and won't disrupt the network for many years.
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