Ich glaube, dass 10%+ durchaus noch drin sind, aber das könnte dann schon das endgültige Signal zum Ausstieg sein. Zumindest wenn diese 10% nicht einen Rücksetzer aufholen, sowas ist ja häufiger. Aber ein ATH von 10% über einem alten ATH an einem einzigen Tag dürfte in einer Situation, in der schon eine Menge Kapital in Bitcoin sitzt, eher rar sein.

Auch 6-8% könnten schon ein Hinweis in diese Richtung sein, wenn wir dabei im Auge behalten, dass die Volatilität abnimmt, und zwar vor allem nach oben hin.

Insgesamt sieht der Kurs heute solide aus, eine Konsolidierung um oder knapp unter 120k deutet sich an. Wenn man auch schon mit viel Fantasie ein sich anbahnendes Doppeltop (123-121.5k) reininterpretieren könnte. Es wäre aber ein sehr, sehr kurzfristiges, also wenn dann - rein charttechnisch - nur ein Signal für eine kleine Korrektur. Nur besteht halt auch so die Gefahr dass dadurch massivere Gewinnmitnahmen ausgelöst werden.

Ich denke trotzdem, mindestens 50% Wahrscheinlichkeit für weitere ATHs. Aber keine 100%. Mein in vorherigen Posts angesprochenes Ziel von 120k wurde ja erreicht

I think the incentives do not align perfectly with that strategy if there are multiple possible attackers. First, another quantum hacker try to hack the same keys but with the alternative strategy to empty the addresses as early as possible. The "silent" hacker's effort would be then in vain. Of course he could monitor the mempool, but his double spend attacks will have a success rate of less then 1, so there will be always effort wasted.

Second, if the "silent" hacker manages really to hack a large number of keys it is very obvious that there was an attack and the price would probably tank, leaving the hacker with less ROI. In contrast, if an attacker targets old P2PK coins then it's possible that a few of these attacks will have no impact in the price because nobody knows there was an attack. And if someone claims coins were stolen, there's always the possibility they were stolen with other techniques, obtaining private keys, exploiting bad RNG etc.

Anyway, having re-used cold storage addresses should be a no-go even in 2025 already. An interesting measure would be to convince all wallet programmers to implement massive warnings for address re-usage, mentioning the possible quantum threat.

In diesem englischen Thread ab dem verlinkten Post findet ihr einige Infos wie Transaktionen unter 1 sat/vbyte bestätigt werden können. Kurzfassung: am besten direkt zu den Minern senden, ihr findet im Faden einige Links dazu, z.B: https://mempool.space/tx/push.

Ein Problem ist auch, dass zumindest über das grafische Standard-Interface einige Wallets wie Electrum eine solche Transaktion erst gar nicht erlauben, zu erstellen. Hier steht, dass es mit dem "Pay to many" Feature bei Electrum funktioniert. Ich werde es demnächst mal selbst ausprobieren, wenn ich wieder UTXOs zum konsolidieren habe.

Thanks for the link.

I think Lopp's proposal is crazy and should be rejected. Only 5 years (since the implementation of a post quantum scheme) to migrate addresses in a mandatory fashion to addresses with enormous signatures? That will lead to high block congestion which will be even worse than the threat by quantum computers. I will repeat it 1000 times more if it's necessary: everybody can now protect his coins simply never re-using addresses. The short-exposition attack is very far away.

And all coins that are existing, in my opinion, should be considered in circulation. And thus it should always be "priced in" that they can be sold at any time. This includes Satoshi's coins. Lopp seems not even to consider that once the bit old stashes like Satoshi's coins are sold, the Satoshi coin FUD will cease for all time.

If Bitcoin dips because a hacker steals all of Satoshis Bitcoins, then let it dip. It will recover.

PQC should be introduced, but completely in a voluntary manner. Tadge Dryja's approach until now is the most interesting one for me.

Most of this debt is private debt. Is a high level of private debt really a "problem"? Most of it is corporate debt, and corporations mostly take debt when they invest, and that's normally a good thing because they build up infrastructure. (Well, there are people like Saylor too, who take debt to buy BTC. Is this "good" or "bad"?)

And again, it's important to see always the relation of debt to GDP. Because it's healthy that when GDP grows, corporations and governments invest more.

Debt to GDP ratio, if public and private debt is aggregated together, peaked in 2020 with 257% of the world GDP. In 2023, it had already returned to 237%. It's still high, but not record high. Probably in real terms it's even lower, due to 2022-23's inflation in many countries.

Source: IMF. Latest full report went only to 2023, and according to other sources global debt to GDP ratio increased slightly in 2024, but only by 1,5%. As I wrote before, probably mostly fueled by China.

This comment seems a bit like ... 2018ish (I don't exactly remember when the Tether fud started). On which metrics do you base that statement?

Ok I propose one: Tether has a market cap of 157 bilion USD right now.

Bitcoin has a market cap of 2.3-2.4 trillion USD. Thus Tether cap is around 6,8% of Bitcoin's cap.

If Tether was 100% backed by Bitcoin, then we'd have around 1,36 million BTC. For me, a Tether collapse's price impact would be between the following two extremes:

- 6,8% of the price (i.e. go down to 110k$ again)
- a sales pressure from 1,36 million Bitcoins. Judging from past movements, I expect about 5% price decrease from each 100,000k BTC. This would mean about a 60-70% crash, or back to the 40-60k$ level approximately.

Tether collapse would for sure be a longer process, so while I can definitely imagine some 50%+ dip in the moment of "maximum panic", once the end of the bankruptcy process nears, the price would pick up again, because the Tether fud would be gone forever. I would not even discard the price being higher.

I expect a similar outcome if Satoshi sold his coins. First a significant dip, but then a recovery with potential even a price increase because the "danger" of "MILLIONS OF BTC SOLD!!!!" will be also gone. The same (slightly lower level) would be true for a Saylor bankruptcy.

This is only true if you take absolute numbers.

Debt rates in comparison to the countries' GDP (in real terms, not nominal terms) are stagnating or sinking in most cases. Most of the recent increase of spending/borrowing can be explained by COVID, and since then the debt rates as percentage of GDP have lowered.

Some examples (2020/2021 to 2024):

- Euro Area: 97% to 87%
- Japan: 225% to 216%
- US: 130% to 125%
- Brazil: 85% to 76%
- India: 58% to 56%

The most significant outlier is China where public debt grew, but on a very low level (20% to 26%).

(Sources: Statista and Ceicdata.)

I don't say that the current debt level is healthy. I'd always opt for a small but gradual debt decrease policy in "good times". But Japan shows you can live highly indebted for decades. So I don't see any collapse in the near future. It's something Bitcoiners seem to like to overdramatize to promote BTC to "fix it" (even Satoshi in some ways did that in his famous on-chain message). But I think Bitcoin doesn't need a financial collapse to thrive, it can thrive even if fiat is doing well for decades more.

A quite nice place to visit in the European summer:

Krakow, Poland


Photo credit: DimaLiss@Pixabay, free use

One of Central Eastern Europe's most beautiful and historic cities, Krakow has also some places to spend your Bitcoin: at least one place to lodge and some shops and eateries. The central area with a biq square and the famous underground bars are a must see. Another interesting place is the historic Kazimierz neighborhood, where some of the Bitcoin-accepting restaurants are located. In addition the Tatra mountainous range is quite close, and if you want to see the horrors humans are capable of and learn from it, you can visit Oswiecim, also known as Auschwitz. The BTCmap location is here.

I was almost about to include Warsaw also in this post, but the city has no accomodation I could find which accepts Bitcoin.

I've looked a bit into the July Bitcoin Optech newsletter and there's a lot of things going on lately.

For example, there's a proposal (with code) to implement Winternitz signatures (which are quantum resistant) with OP_CAT. OP_CAT has still not been added to the Bitcoin code, but it's a relatively popular feature request and thus it could be added in one of the next versions. That could mean that quantum resistance would be achieved faster than expected.

Tadge Dryja (one of the LN inventors) has also proposed a scheme to prevent quantum hackers from stealing coins by double spending transactions where public keys were revealed. It would be a soft fork and it seems while it needs a quantum resistant algorithm, it could be posted in an OP_RETURN output. That would be huge: If this works and gets implemented, it looks almost like the missing part in the puzzle for strategies you can use already today to secure your coins from future QC attacks. Basically if you don't reuse addresses and use this strategy you would not be vulnerable to any quantum computer attacks at all even in a distant future, with the exception of Grover's algorithm (which is much more far away than a Shor algorithm ECDSA exploit and if it really becomes an issue, it could be basically repelled using SHA512 instead of SHA256).

That there are so many options discussed is very healthy and confirms my impression that the devs are correct in not implementing something like BIP360 "in a hurry".

Es fehlen mir irgendwie noch die Kommentare weiterer Bitcointalk-Veteranen hier im Kursverlaufthread dafür, das Top langsam zu callen ... Die 119.5k heute waren jedenfalls schon wieder ein ATH, auch wenn es sich kaum so anfühlte ...

Aber MaxMueller hat schon recht, die doch ansteigende Bullishness und die nahezu Abwesenheit von bärischen Stimmen deutet langsam zumindest drauf hin, dass wir uns auf die Endphase der derzeitigen bullischen Bewegung hinbewegen. Auch das "diesmal ist alles anders" (was ja in Unknown01s Kommentar anklingt) habe ich sehr oft in der Nähe von lokalen Tops gehört ... das letzte Mal z.B. 2024 im März bei 73k ... Und dann gings doch noch mal bis zu 30% runter ...

Könnte trotzdem noch für einen Angriff auf 150k reichen. Was nämlich auch noch fehlte, waren Tage mit 10% Anstieg. Das hatten wir sonst eigentlich immer in der New-Paradigm-Phase ...

Bleibt die Frage, kommt dann "der Bärenmarkt" oder doch eher eine Ruhepause wie 2024? Oder werden die Bärenmärkte ruhiger? Oder doch nicht und es geht wieder 70%+ abwärts?

I personally think the idea to literally take profit -- like @OP wrote, selling only BTC for the value you "won" in this bull market -- is quite good if you're not willing to commit for the long run.

I think also most investors that are taking profit in the current area at $115-120k probably have invested at much less than $100k so their ROI may be quite high already now. Some will have set an explicit goal of e.g. 50% or 100% profit and that should have been easy to achieve in the last 2-3 years.

Of course, most of us think that Bitcoin can fly much higher still. But at least when it comes to what could happen in 2025, it is not that unreasonable to be a bit more cautious as we're already almost 3 years in a bull market (since late 2022's $15k lows, technically). My personal guess is that at least 150k are possible, but it's not guaranteed at all. And thus, if you're more of the cautious type, it's reasonable to sell a little bit lower.

An alternative idea to taking profit I will always be advocating for: spend some bitcoins directly instead of selling them for fiat. For example travelling "Store of Value" is totally okay but Bitcoin would be even stronger and more resilient if it was used more for real payments (not for every coffee, mind you ...).

Regarding economic impacts, a crucial part of the answer to that question is imo "which sectors would be most affected by deflation?". A deflationary or low-inflation Bitcoin standard would mean a quite hard currency, which means low pressure for people to spend money. People would tend to hoard money more and thus be able to invest in durable goods.

My own guess is that sectors which benefit from high sales numbers of low-quality goods would be those most prone to be the "losers". Perhaps also parts of the service sector, mostly those selling services you only purchase out of a YOLO feeling, because you don't know where to spend your money

In contrast, manufacturers of high quality durable goods could be the most benefitted. Also essential goods (food etc.) and services like health should be untouched or benefit from a Bitcoin standard (as they would attract more capital).

Banks could shift focus from retail banking to investment banking and loans. You don't really need an account in a Bitcoin standard world (although banks could probably try to offer stablecoins, but L2s should be competitive), but there's someone needed who can evaluate whether you're elegible for a loan or not.

One could also look at countries with low inflation or deflation, like Japan. I have never been there, but it seems to be a stable, highly developed society.

I think this is indeed a good point. If Bitcoin reserves were more or less fairly distributed between the states and "blocs", I think the vision of Bitcoin as a reserve currency is a little bit less scary. The ideal for me would be indeed most countries or central banks holding some small reserves, but totalling not more than a few millions (2-3 M).

However, in the case the reserves get bigger even widely distributed BTC would be problematic. Just again citing the case of FATF involvement: China is an active member of that organization, even if the CP may have interest to hide cryptocurrency holdings or transfers, "officially" it supports anti-privacy policies (and in addition China is one of the most surveillance-ridden states of the world). Russia alone is too small to counter the whole FATF camp, and I wouldn't also like the "privacy camp" to be representated by a brutal dictatorship whose only interest in Bitcoin is warfare (a post-Putin Russia without imperialist ambitions of course would be totally okay, but then the reason for the Russian anti-sanctions stance would wane away probably). And North Korea as the "defenders of Bitcoin freedom"? C'mon ...

Vitalik indeed had incidence, and you're correct that Ethereum is more centralized than Bitcoin. However, for me that is only a gradual difference in this case. The power of someone to change the algorithm in a fork situation is higher if this person has also "social power" like in the case of Vitalik, but an entitiy without that influence with even more money could achieve the same result. The question is how much more money you'd need to equal that "social power".

In addition, we're witnessing already now that nation-states try to frame Bitcoin as an investment asset downplaying crucial features like censorship resistance and privacy.

The "national reserve" managers are also Bitcoin users. And if they own more Bitcoins than retailers, then they probably will have also more power. Take into account that big corporations' coins (Saylor and Cia.) will probably not fight for privacy. They will align with the likely winner.

Still, the "retailer's UASF" could win -- if, and only if, the retailers are overwhelmingly in the pro privacy camp. If they're divided (40:60 would not be enough, I think) then it becomes complicated.
 
I would normally be still optimistic. But what's a bit scary to me is that I'm seeing more and more posts which question privacy measures for Bitcoin, like CoinJoins. See this thread as a recent example. Of course, the thread didn't get any merits, and was fiercely criticised, but I see such posts much more often now than a couple of years ago when only trolls complained about "criminals using Bitcoin".

I interpret that you mean that even the nation states would not risk losing the value of their reserves for that conflict and would thus not actively interfere in the fork debate. This depends largely how controversial a change is, and if a value loss has to be feared. If there's for example a 50:50 situation among "retail" users, then the chance for the pro-FATF camp to win the conflict without major losses are quite good, just because retailers are the least powerful users, unfortunately.

(I also disagree a bit with your figures about a possible Bitcoin market cap if BTC is used as a widespread reserve currency. I think it would be more aligned with current gold's valuation, not 5-10 times higher. Gold is already a major reserve asset, and in addition has industrial and decorative use. I think a "gold flippening" -- BTC market cap > value of all gold in the world --- can happen but gold would then probably crash.)

My personal conclusion of this debate here until now is that it is possible that Bitcoin can repel a "FATF cartel attack", but for this, the users must be concientized about it's core values. If these values persist, then even big strategic reserves will perhaps not be that scary. But for the current landscape, where the censorship resistance aspect is downplayed and criticised not only by nation-states but also by some retail users groups, I'm not so optimistic.

BTW: For me, necroposting is totally okay as long as it's a substantial post, and that's the case here imo.

SHA256 isn't the biggest problem. Grover's algorithm can speed up brute force attacks but even with quantum computers it would still take a very long time to find a collission for keys with correct entropy.
You probably mean ECDSA though , which can be "cracked" using Shor's algorithm if the public key is exposed.

Just in another discussion I mentioned that Bitcoin indeed should be prepared a bit earlier than banks. Banks can update the software relatively fast, they often use cloud banking platforms today, so a centralized update providing post quantum cryptography would take at most a couple of days up to weeks. In the bank use case, it would also not be problematic to provide several algorithms (e.g. FALCON and SPHINCS+) at once, as storage size is not so much an issue, and if vulnerabilities are found they can kept secret and the algo can be changed to another one.

Bitcoin's problem is its slowness: it takes a lot of time to move all coins to post-quantum cryptography. Thus, to ensure a gradual update, the necessary algorithms should be provided when it could be estimated that in the next 3-5 years a quantum threat could emerge, even if the probability isn't that high (let's say 5%).

There are however also emergency measures which could be taken if the threat comes earlier than expected. For example, it could be an idea to temporarily increase the block size. Only in the most extreme worst case scenario (out of nowhere a quantum attacker is able to attack addresses "on the fly" in <10 minutes while they spend coins and reveal the public key) Bitcoin would run into real difficulties. Of course it shouldn't be relied upon.

"Not reusing" means that if you make a transaction, you transact all coins to other addresses, including the "change" which will be transferred to a change address, just like most Bitcoin clients do it by default. So the scenario you're trying to install here doesn't make sense. Not reusing means not reusing.

"Exponential" doesn't mean "fast". If quantum computers now have 1000 qubits (most have less), and the progress is 5% per year, you have still way more than 100 years until you get to a million qubits. With 10%, you have 70 years., and even with 20% increase per year (which would be incredibly fast!) you still have almost 40 years.

Only if they use so outdated protocols that they have to re-use addresses.


I agree here, see above. But the post-quantum cryptosystems should also be mature. If you're not ChatGPT, then please read @achow101's post about that issue and provide solid arguments why it's better to deploy untested cryptography NOW instead of waiting let's say 3-5 times more, to be able to make a better decision.

The problem is that since the irruption of the "strategic reserve" idea, there are entities which could potentially acquire millions of BTC. Even if it's unlikely that a single nation will really buy > 2-3 millions of BTC on its own, several nations together could form a cartel with certain common interests. FATF for example is an organism made up by a lot of governments, and if all FATF member states together had let's say 20% of the Bitcoin supply, then it could have enough power to reject privacy improvements which require softforks.

This wouldn't be a single manipulation event. It would be constant pressure on developers, exchanges and miners to reject privacy-related softforks. Normally, users have the option of an "user activated fork" as a last resort in this case: forking away from the main chain implementing the update anyway without miner consent. But the "FATF cartel" could scare users to use this pro-privacy Bitcoin fork, selling millions of coins on this chain to impose the chain with less privacy.

This "manipulation threat" is limited to certain issues like privacy where such cartels could form, of course.

You are probably trying to promote some shitcoin judging from the second part of the post, but I concede you the benefit of the doubt for now and answer, also to prevent newbies getting scared from your post.

What you forget is that there is a way to protect your coins already: Do not reuse your addresses. Above all if they're meant for cold storage.

As I wrote above, there's discussion in the mailing list, there has been a draft BIP already, and at least some of the Bitcoin developers are open for changes. But if the current research on post-quantum cryptography is simply not mature enough, then it doesn't make sense to hurry up just because there's a 0,001% probability of someone stealing some old P2PK coins in the next 10 years.

A hack of a single Satoshi-era address, or two or three, in the next 10 years would not be the apocalypse, it would be a hack like any other. If that happens, then it's really time to upgrade, but that's some time away still.

The technology evolution needed between the scenario "crack a P2PK key from Satoshi's era in 1 year" and "crack a key in 10 minutes while the transaction is in the mempool" is huge. And only if this happens, the strategy of not reusing addresses isn't enough anymore and Bitcoin needs to upgrade.

I agree here, and it matches my own experiences in countries where the local currency is competing with the USD as a "harder" currency. However, much depends on the type of money you actually get for your work. If you get the "hard" money directly, you may as well spend it directly if you have the opportunity. Thus, if Bitcoin really begins to circulate, the hesitance to spend it should be lower than in a scenario like now when you've to constantly re-buy BTC. This is of course a chicken and egg problem. And that's why I think if you like the idea of Bitcoin as a global currency, and have the opportunity and see good deals, you should support merchants offering the BTC payment alternative so the circulation can gradually improve.

While that wasn't my point here, you're of course correct that Bitcoin only as "backing" currency for some "new kind of fiat" would not generate that much onchain activity. It depends though how this is organized. If it's backed by a trusted entity, like a government or a large corporation (just like stablecoins today) then indeed the blockchain footprint should be minimal, but in a more decentralized backing scenario which is organized more like a second layer, more activity should also be recorded on the base layer.

My point was more the following idea: In the "Bitcoin bull" world, I often see very utopia-ish predictions where Bitcoin one day magically "changes state" from a speculative asset to the "world global currency". This transition would probably not happen that smoothly if current use patterns contininue to prevail (hoard and sell). All major cyclic crashes have been of more than 75% which means there was always massive profit taking, and the downside volatility decreases much less than upside volatility.

And it's possible that this bumpy ride to the Bitcoin standard will mean that this utopia will never materialize. Just a random scenario:  imagine the US buying a large stash of Bitcoins for their strategic reserve and running into a deep bear market just afterwards, followed by a government change which changes the Bitcoin policy again to restrictive, which amplifies the bear market. This would hurt the "strategic reserve" idea much more than El Salvador's meager results in their adoption, and could end the dream of a lot of Bitcoin bulls. It's a scenario with a certain likelihood, considering the current high valuation of Bitcoin.

A smoother transaction would happen if Bitcoin achieves the "world currency" status not by speculation by nation-states and companies, but by P2P cash usage, at least for international payments, larger online purchases and such stuff (not for your day to day coffee). This would boost liquidity and lower volatility in a more natural way. Currently I think the largest impedements to that "alternative utopia" is volatility and lack of hedging methods which preserve the decentralization, followed by the bad usability of L2s. There's progress but still a lot has to be done. But it doesn't hurt to promote the P2P cash idea.

I largely agree with the other points of your post, for example the chicken and egg problem for merchants and the amplification of the characteristics of "hard money" by being censorship resistant. I also agree with the multi-currency idea, I don't think Bitcoin will be the "one and only" world currency. But it could, on a global level, become something like the USD today, an alternative, harder currency, and this is more likely if the P2P cash idea thrives.

This is indeed an interesting argument, but as these times are over (and they were already over in 2023/2024 when the intermediate transaction activity high was recorded), I still think if retail interest picks up again (current Google Trends values hint that this is still not the case), and then we're not seeing an increase in on-chain activity (including L2's of course), it may be time for a "not your keys, not your coins" campaign to avoid further centralization.

---

A point which is a bit less important for the topic but I wanted to ask anyway:

What do you refer to "bad" in relation to fiat here? The inflation wave in 2022/23? Because currently, most money supply charts (e.g. M2) show a contraction or at least stagnation again, which hints that at this moment, fiat is relatively "healthy". I may agree more about the burden of debt in selected countries, but also here, not all have deteriorated, most countries in Europe for example were lowering their public debt in relation to GDP in recent years.

Grade vor einer halben Stunde wurde das ATH deutlich und börsenübergreifend durchbrochen: 112.800 $. Mal sehen, was der Tag noch bringt. Da auch das vorherige ATH sich wie ein "ganz normaler Tag" angefühlt hatte, also keine richtige Explosion nach oben war, könnte sich das jetzt wiederholen. Die Frage ist, ob die Trader das als "gesund" ansehen oder am Ende eher enttäuscht sind und lieber Gewinne mitnehmen.

Aber noch ist das "deutliche ATH" zumindest ja nur ein paar Minuten alt

I agree almost with all you wrote, but it has to be noted that the problem with Bitcoin is slightly more complex due to the reaction time of the system being slower.

Banks and their software providers can update their account systems to post-quantum cryptography in a couple of days (most smaller banks at least are anyway using cloud solutions today which are even faster to update, perhaps in hours...).

But in the case of Bitcoin, the biggest issue is probably that while you could also deploy a softfork relatively fast, if there are too many people which have still vulnerable keys (either P2PK/P2MS etc. or re-used addresses) then that would put a lot of pressure to the block space market, potentially for months or even years.

That's the reason why I think people should begin to care about at least not re-using cold storage addresses, which removes the "initial threat" already -- coins which can be attacked with years of quantum computing work. And that the devs should come up with a post-quantum solution before 2030 or so. So the migration can be gradual and slowly without any interruption of Bitcoin's functions.