The decade-long narrative of Bitcoin as “digital gold” is facing its most significant structural challenge yet. Renowned on-chain analyst Willy Woo, in a recent X post, warned that Bitcoin has broken a 12-year valuation trend relative to gold, citing a looming “Quantum Discount” that could suppress prices for years.
Four million BTC supply shock
Historically, Bitcoin has aggressively outpaced gold in value — by 76,231,860% according to ICE chart on TradingView. However, Woo observes that this relationship has decoupled just as the global “long-term debt cycle” reaches its peak. While macro investors typically flee to hard assets during debt deleveraging, gold is “mooning” while Bitcoin remains tethered.
The culprit? “Q-Day” — the point at which quantum computers become powerful enough to crack the cryptographic signatures protecting the network.
The primary fear is not just Bitcoin network security but a massive liquidity event, as Woo points out that roughly four million “lost” Bitcoins — untouched for years and often belonging to early adopters and even the creator of the cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto — could become vulnerable. If quantum technology can unlock these wallets, those coins would effectively return to circulation.
To put the scale in perspective:
- Total enterprise/ETF accumulation since 2020: 2.8 million BTC.
- Total “lost” coins at risk: 4 million BTC.
Woo estimates that this potential supply represents eight years of enterprise accumulation hitting the market at once.
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While Bitcoin can be patched with quantum-resistant signatures, Woo argues this does not solve the “lost coin” dilemma. He places a 75% probability that the network will fail to freeze these legacy coins via a hard fork, meaning the market must now price in this risk.
With Q-Day estimated to be 5 to 15 years away, BTC may trade with a cloud over its head during the very decade it is most needed as a sovereign hedge. For investors, this “Quantum Discount” suggests that while gold rallies on macro fears, Bitcoin’s path to new heights remains complicated by its own technological evolution.