Cory Fields proposes quantum landmines to deter Bitcoin theft

The Bitcoin Core developer wants future quantum attackers to put their own coins at risk before they can touch anyone else's Bitcoin’s quantum problem has mostly been framed as a race: upgrade the network before someone builds a machine capable of cracking its cryptography. Cory Fields wants to add a second idea to the mix: make the thief pay first. Fields, a Bitcoin Core developer who works at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, posted a proposal to the bitcoin-dev mailing list on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. He calls the concept “quantum landmines.” The goal is simple to state and hard to build. Anyone trying to steal coins with a quantum computer would first have to risk their own money. He was careful to label it a thought experiment. The design leans on quantum-safe wallets and enforcement rules that nobody has written yet. How a quantum landmine would work Start with the threat. Bitcoin relies on public-key cryptography, where a public key can be seen by anyone and a private key proves ownership. Developers have long worried that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could work backward from an exposed public key to the private key behind it. That is the scenario Fields is ...