Bitcoin should be crushing gold right now, but it’s not. And according to on-chain analyst Willy Woo, the reason comes down to one word: quantum.
Woo posted a thread on X today alongside a chart tracking how BTC has performed against gold since 2010. For 12 straight years, Bitcoin steadily gained ground on gold in a clear upward trend. That trend just broke.
Woo marks two moments on the chart where things shifted – the first time quantum risk was brought up on Bitcoin’s core developer mailing list, and the Quantum Bitcoin Summit.
“BTC should be valued a LOT HIGHER relative to gold. Should be. IT’S NOT,” Woo wrote. “The valuation trend broke down once QUANTUM came into awareness.”
4 Million Lost BTC Could Come Back Into Play
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Quantum computers, once powerful enough, could crack the cryptographic keys protecting around 4 million Bitcoin sitting in lost wallets – coins that nobody currently has access to.
Woo put that number in context. Since MicroStrategy kicked off its buying spree in 2020, every company and spot ETF combined has only scooped up 2.8 million BTC total. So 4 million lost coins is bigger than 8 years of corporate accumulation.
He gives just a 25% chance that the Bitcoin network would hard fork to freeze those coins before they’re recovered.
“The market has started pricing in the return of these lost coins ahead of time,” Woo said.
He estimates Q-Day – the point when quantum computers become a real threat – is still 5 to 15 years out. But markets don’t wait for the event and price it in early.
Also Read: Is Bitcoin Safe From Quantum Computing? CoinShares Data Says Yes For Now
Gold Keeps Climbing, but What About Bitcoin?
The timing makes it worse. Woo argues we’re at the tail end of a long-term debt cycle, exactly the kind of environment where big money and sovereign nations pile into hard assets.
“It’s the end of the long term debt cycle, it’s where macro investors and sovereigns run to hard assets like gold,” Woo said. “Hence gold moons without BTC.”
Not Everyone Agrees
Crypto investor Jean Michel Libera fired back, calling Woo’s argument a mix-up between technical fears and actual market forces. He argued the BTC/Gold gap is just normal consolidation after hitting resistance, driven by liquidity cycles and not quantum panic.
Woo pointed to satoshi-era whales offloading Bitcoin over the last 12 months as proof that the capital flows tell a different story than simple consolidation.
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