The dozen-or-so global nodes are all in active collaboration and can change BTC’s programming with a majority vote (which is part of its core code, from what I barely remember reading), so they can simply roll with it. All deceased users’ wallets would eventually become bounties (like the original one by Nakamoto, who is probably dead), while everyone else would migrate to quantum-resistant wallets to keep up with the times with no problem.
I imagine the oldest caches will be the easiest to break, so for those the main difficulty will be in finding them. For some of the middle-ancient currencies, it might still require a considerable amount of compute to crack, or specialized knowledge from people who hoard vulnerabilities and will help crack a cache in exchange for a cut.
Won’t future cyber pirates simply crack private keys by factoring primes on their quantum iPhones?
The dozen-or-so global nodes are all in active collaboration and can change BTC’s programming with a majority vote (which is part of its core code, from what I barely remember reading), so they can simply roll with it. All deceased users’ wallets would eventually become bounties (like the original one by Nakamoto, who is probably dead), while everyone else would migrate to quantum-resistant wallets to keep up with the times with no problem.
I imagine the oldest caches will be the easiest to break, so for those the main difficulty will be in finding them. For some of the middle-ancient currencies, it might still require a considerable amount of compute to crack, or specialized knowledge from people who hoard vulnerabilities and will help crack a cache in exchange for a cut.