freeze = confiscate = steal, aren’t you worried about the precedent this sets? whatever the argument you might make in its favor, it defeats bitcoin’s whole purpose
Discussion
Does it? First of all you didn’t engage with the argument in the post at all, so I’d encourage you to do so. But to your point, I disagree. You could also see this as preventing these coins from being stolen. In fact, in order to enable people to claim funds that were stored insecurely but using a seedphrase-based derivation you *have* to freeze insecure spend paths. Given that is the vast majority of wallets today, I find it hard to believe the tradeoff of screwing most bitcoiners is worth it.
"Preventing these coins from being stolen" sounds a lot like taking away agency from the coin owners, active intervention, even if with good intentions is what the fiat system constantly does.
Giving people the tools to move them to a safe address seems way more sane to me, if they don't take action it's on them whatever the outcome is. Of course that assumes they're even aware of it, but in the end freezing it would have them lose their coins anyway so with the former there's at least a chance for them to safeguard their coins.
So either they lose it for not being in the known and not moving or lose from a direct intervention, which seems more hostile and against the Bitcoin ethos to me.
Now how much economic actors value non interventionism vs "good interventionism" is up in the air.
IMO giving options is better than deciding for users, taking away their agency.
But what is that about having to freeze insecure spend paths? Doesn't that still gives people agency to pick that option instead of just losing their coins by default to being frozen?
You’re assuming I’m advocating for doing this now or any time soon, which I very much am not. The only time where it makes sense to consider freezing QC-vulnerable coins is when it’s very obvious that a CRQC is on the immediate horizon and they’re going to be stolen if nothing is done.
Yes, we strongly agree that options for QC-secure Bitcoin storage should be provided *long* before that time comes, and without that any discussion of freezing also makes no sense.
When the quantum threat hits is unknown. Confiscating coins beforehand is irresponsible. It’s difficult because there’s likely no lead time, so I defer to not confiscating.
The solution to that concern is lead time :). Provide a way to embed a QC-safe pubkey in outputs today, give wallets plenty of time to adopt it, then there will have been years and years of lead time :)
Arbitrarily deciding when to freeze peoples’ coins against a threat that has an unknown arrival time is irresponsible. I don’t disagree with adding quantum key schemes. I disagree with freezing peoples’ coins.
Waiting too long until it is too late is irresponsible.
Someone dumping stolen coins won’t kill bitcoin..
Setting a precedent that devs can alter account balances during “emergencies” is a much bigger long-term threat, especially if the “emergency” hasn’t arrived yet.
It’s a very dangerous precedent that should be resisted despite a price drop from someone dumping coins — minimizing the power devs wield is far more important. Nomos operates off of precedents, whether it’s legal or social consensus.