Bitcoin on-chain analyst James Check, formerly Glassnode’s lead analyst, argues that fears of a catastrophic Bitcoin collapse tied to a potential quantum-driven sale of Satoshi-era coins may be overstated. In a blog post published April 23, Check said the most vulnerable segment of Bitcoin’s supply is likely the roughly 1.716 million BTC held in early pay-to-public-key, or P2PK, outputs, but he contended that even a full liquidation of that stash would fall within levels the market has historically absorbed over periods of intense selling.
Check’s note enters a broader debate over how Bitcoin should respond if cryptographically relevant quantum computers ever become capable of attacking exposed public keys. That discussion has increasingly focused on whether vulnerable coins should be frozen, restricted, or allowed to move under existing rules. Check said his report was intended to test a specific claim circulating in that debate: that selling vulnerable coins would create a fatal market event for Bitcoin.
He did not dismiss the underlying quantum risk. In the post, Check said he takes the issue seriously and supports development of credible post-quantum solutions, while also noting that he is not attempting to estimate when or whether such hardware will arrive. His narrower claim is that the market impact of a forced sale, while negative, may be less existential than some advocates suggest.
Check: Satoshi Selloff May Be Market Absorbable
According to Check, the headline figure often cited in the quantum debate — about 6.934 million BTC with exposed public keys — needs more careful segmentation. He broke that pool into roughly 1.716 million BTC in Satoshi-era P2PK outputs, 214,000 BTC in Taproot outputs, and about 4.996 million BTC in reused addresses. In his view, the latter two categories likely overstate immediate risk because many of those coins are controlled by exchanges, custodians, ETFs, or living users who would probably migrate funds if a post-quantum path became necessary.
That leaves the Satoshi-era P2PK pool as the primary long-range target, Check argued. He described those coins as likely lost and therefore less likely to trigger legal disputes if stolen, making them more attractive to a hypothetical attacker. For the sake of analysis, he assumed the full 1.716 million BTC could be stolen and sold over a short period, then compared that figure with several on-chain and market activity benchmarks.
His conclusion was that the total would amount to roughly 60 to 90 days of sell-side pressure and corresponding demand in conditions comparable to a Bitcoin bull market or a late-stage bear market capitulation. Using revived supply, exchange deposits, cost-basis rotation, and trade-volume comparisons, Check said the market has previously handled similarly sized waves of coin movement. He said such a sale would probably depress price and could contribute to a bear market, but he rejected the idea that it would necessarily represent an “end-of-days” event for Bitcoin.
Check also pointed to current market structure to support that argument. In his post, he said revived supply of coins older than six months typically sits near 10,000 BTC per day even in weaker conditions, while spikes to 20,000 to 30,000 BTC per day often accompany stronger profit-taking phases. On that framework, absorbing 1.716 million BTC would require months, not years, of demand, which he said is materially different from claims that such selling would overwhelm the market beyond repair.
He made similar comparisons using on-chain realized price distribution data. According to Check, about 2.24 million BTC changed on-chain cost basis over the prior 90 days, and more than 2.3 million BTC transferred to new buyers between $60,000 and $80,000 after the Feb. 5, 2026 sell-off to $60,000. He acknowledged that not every on-chain movement reflects explicit selling, but said even after applying heavy discounts, the figures still suggest Bitcoin routinely clears very large volumes of supply.
Check’s exchange-flow and derivatives comparisons led to a similar result. He wrote that roughly 850,000 BTC are deposited to exchanges over 30 days, 1.8 million BTC over 60 days, and 2.7 million BTC over 90 days. He also noted that the equivalent of 1.716 million BTC is traded in futures markets every two to three days, on spot markets every 10 to 20 days, and in ETF markets every 25 to 60 days. While he cautioned that trading volume is not a direct proxy for one-way sell pressure, he said the figures offer a useful sense check on market depth.
On-Chain Data Challenges Fatal Bitcoin Crash Fears
A central part of Check’s argument is that the full 6.934 million BTC figure should not be treated as equally likely to hit the market. He said Taproot balances are relatively small and disproportionately associated with inscriptions, while reused-address balances include many institutional operators with strong incentives to upgrade security. He called for further work from on-chain data firms with robust entity labels to isolate dormant, non-entity reused-address supply and better estimate what portion is genuinely at risk.
That distinction matters because much of the public debate has framed all exposed-key coins as a single potential supply overhang. Check said that framing loses important nuance. In his view, an “honest analysis” should haircut the total significantly before drawing conclusions about possible market effects. He added that his earlier rough estimate suggested only a small share of top-rich-list supply falls into the more concerning category of dormant reused addresses not obviously tied to labeled entities.
The post also addressed a compromise proposal sometimes referred to as an “hourglass” approach in the BIP-360 discussion. Under that model, miners would include no more than one P2PK output per block rather than freezing all such coins outright. Check wrote that with about 38,000 P2PK outputs, that process would take around 264 days, roughly in line with the time the broader network might need to migrate to post-quantum-secure systems under congestion. He said that would limit block-by-block sell pressure to around 50 BTC and would not materially disrupt the recent spending pattern of legacy P2PK outputs.
More broadly, Check framed the issue as both a market-structure question and a governance question. He said the case for freezing coins should not rest on unsupported assumptions that a sale would automatically destroy Bitcoin’s price. Instead, he argued, the stronger disagreement is philosophical: whether Bitcoin should prioritize property rights, whether lost coins should remain lost, and what protocol changes are justified to preempt a future threat.
His post stops short of offering certainty on outcomes. Check acknowledged that a successful quantum attacker selling early-era coins would almost certainly weigh on price. But based on the on-chain measures he examined, he said the evidence does not support treating that scenario as uniquely fatal compared with prior periods in which Bitcoin absorbed heavy liquidation and transferred supply to new holders.
Check’s analysis does not resolve the larger quantum debate, and it does not attempt to forecast when a cryptographically relevant quantum computer might emerge. What it does offer is a data-based challenge to one of the strongest claims in that debate: that a Satoshi-era selloff would necessarily break Bitcoin beyond recovery. For market participants weighing protocol responses, that distinction could prove important as discussions around post-quantum defenses continue.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.
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