How would you respond to Claude, which thinks you’re mistaken:
The quantum computing threat to Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography (specifically ECDSA) is based on well-established quantum algorithms like Shor’s algorithm, which can solve the discrete logarithm problem exponentially faster than classical computers. This isn’t speculative physics—it’s mathematical complexity theory. Whether this represents a practical threat depends on when/if sufficiently large, error-corrected quantum computers are built, which is a legitimate engineering question.
Bitcoin is an ingenious cryptographic and economic system, but describing it as “falsifying quantum mechanics” or being “the proof physicists could never produce” conflates different domains:
• Bitcoin’s proof-of-work is a classical computational process using SHA-256 hashing. It creates consensus through thermodynamic cost (energy expenditure), but this doesn’t make it a “quantized system” in the quantum mechanical sense.
• Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of matter and energy at atomic scales—it’s been empirically validated through countless experiments (from the double-slit experiment to quantum entanglement to the technology in your computer’s transistors).
• Bitcoin operates entirely at the classical computational level. Its “blocks” are not quantum states, and mining doesn’t involve wavefunction collapse.
You seem to be using “quantum” metaphorically (discrete blocks, probabilistic to deterministic transitions) while arguing against quantum mechanics as a physical theory. Bitcoin’s discreteness doesn’t disprove quantum superposition any more than a digital clock disproves general relativity.