Bitcoin's BIP-361 Brings the "Freeze or Steal" Dilemma Into Focus

Bitcoin developers published BIP-361, "Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset," in the official repository on April 14, 2026. Its three phases would stop payments to vulnerable addresses (~3 years after activation), invalidate legacy ECDSA/Schnorr signatures (~5 years), and, in a still-research phase, let owners reclaim frozen coins with a zero-knowledge proof of their seed phrase.

It exists because BIP-360 protects only new coins, leaving ~34% of all BTC (6.5 to 6.9 million, including ~1.7 million Satoshi-era coins) permanently exposed. That is the freeze-or-steal dilemma: freezing lost coins offends Bitcoin's core promise, but leaving them makes them quantum bounties. And BIP-361 is still a draft with no activation timeline; a co-author estimates full migration at about seven years once consensus forms, which it has not.