Erik -

You were right to balk at some of the ideas that have been brought into the 
milieu around Bitcoin. There is no acceptable number of UTXOs to confiscate 
or lock out in Bitcoin. Outputs should continue to function unimpeded in 
the way they did when they were first inscribed in the blockchain. It is 
the prerogative of the users to decide if, when, how, and for what reason 
they move and safeguard their value, not just because it is their property. 
And it is a good idea for users to be informed and educate themselves about 
the features and risks of the various tools and output types that allow 
them to do so.

Certainly, new alternatives are worth exploring, but no options are without 
tradeoffs. Bitcoin users should think carefully about what these are and 
should evaluate for themselves the alternatives and their own threat 
models. Ironically, the lesson of the DAO Hack might as well be that clever 
-- but ultimately misguided and mis-implemented -- mechanisms have the 
potential to cripple a cryptocurrency.

Of course, some users have lost access to their keys, or may simply refuse 
to move their bitcoin, and some powerful cryptanalysts from the future may 
one day recover keys and steal value (or maybe they won't). Developing 
options for such a future is clearly a high priority for a subset of 
Bitcoin users, but forks have to be carefully regarded because they are 
highly consequential.

Unlike Ethereum, Bitcoin is an immutable chain. In Bitcoin, history doesn't 
get re-written and consensus valid transactions that pay a market fee can 
be included in a future block. Opting others into schemes they did not 
consent to ex post facto is misguided at best. There may come a day when it 
no longer makes sense to create new, legacy output types, and we have seen 
that the market could just as well handle this. Virtually no one creates 
P2PK outputs today. Still, no threat justifies retroactively restricting, 
disabling, or stealing the property and value of others.

As M. Corallo points out, the market will ultimately decide. 

Louise
On Tuesday, April 14, 2026 at 12:51:06 PM UTC-6 Erik Aronesty wrote:

> Deactivating ECDSA/Schnorr based schemes should not be discussed 
> seriously.  
>
> You give people alternatives, yes. I'm a big fan of quantum optionality. 
>
> But we cannot have a forced vaccination situation. 
>
>
> There is simply no credible way you can convince somebody who is sovereign 
> that their encryption algorithm is broken aside from breaking it. 
>
> People can send to bad keys today.
>
> There are lots of op codes that let people shoot themselves in the foot 
>
> Bitcoin is not a nanny state.
>
> "oh no someone might break satoshi's keys" 
>
> Let them.  if satoshi's 50 Bitcoin stash keys serve to be the bounty that 
> propels humanity to a future of limitless unbounded magical computing that 
> is not a problem we need to solve right now. 
>
> The worst possible thing we could do is confiscate everybody's coin and 
> move to a NISD approved algorithm on the say so of large government funded 
> organizations.
>
> That sounds dystopian at best. 
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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