Willy Woo: Quantum computing risks are eroding BTC's long-term valuation advantage over gold.

Willy Woo, in an article on the X platform, stated that the market has begun pricing in the threat of quantum computing, posing a challenge to the 4 million "lost" BTC and BTC's 12-year valuation increase relative to gold. The market is already considering the risk of a future "Q-Day" breakthrough—the moment when a sufficiently powerful quantum computer breaks existing public-key cryptography. If a quantum computer can derive the private key from the public key, approximately 4 million BTC, thought to be permanently lost due to the loss of their private keys, could re-enter circulation, thus undermining BTC's core scarcity narrative. This portion of tokens represents approximately 25% to 30% of the total BTC supply. Willy Woo estimates that there is only a 25% chance the BTC network will agree to freeze these tokens through a hard fork. Freezing tokens involves changing long-term norms such as fungibility, immutability, and ownership, potentially triggering deep divisions within the community. With a 75% probability that these tokens will remain unfrozen, investors should assume that the equivalent of 8 years of corporate accumulation in BTC may once again become consumable. This prospect translates into a structural discount for BTC relative to gold valuation over the next 5 to 15 years, meaning that the long-term upward trend in BTC's purchasing power measured in gold ounces is no longer valid. Furthermore, Jefferies strategist Christopher Wood removed BTC from his flagship model portfolio in January and shifted to gold, again citing the possibility that quantum machines could diminish BTC's value storage properties for pension-level investors.