Bitcoin’s store-of-value thesis is facing sharper criticism from within the crypto market itself. Willy Woo says a 12-year trend that had supported Bitcoin’s strength has suffered a major break because of quantum-computing risk. Ran Neuner, for his part, says this is the first time in 12 years that he has seriously questioned what Bitcoin is actually meant to be.
Woo says quantum risk could reshape supply expectations
Woo compared Bitcoin with gold and warned that investors may not want to hear his conclusion if they want to stay optimistic. His central point is not only that Bitcoin will likely need quantum-resistant signatures, but that such an upgrade would leave a separate issue unresolved: roughly 4 million lost BTC could potentially return to circulation.
He estimates there is a 75% chance that a hard fork would not freeze those coins. In his view, that possibility has to be reflected in risk-adjusted pricing. Woo framed the scale of that supply risk with a comparison that has drawn attention: since Strategy began accumulating Bitcoin in 2020, public companies and spot ETFs together have acquired about 2.8 million BTC. A return of 4 million lost coins, he said, would equal roughly eight years of institutional accumulation.
Woo also argued that the market has already started pricing in this scenario and that the process will continue until “Q-Day” risk is genuinely removed. His estimate puts Q-Day about 5 to 15 years away. That leaves Bitcoin trading under a long period of uncertainty, even as he says the coming decade may be exactly when hard assets are most needed at the end of a long debt cycle.
Neuner asks why Bitcoin did not absorb stress when it had the chance
Neuner’s concern is less about price weakness and more about behavior under real-world pressure. He revisited Bitcoin’s original identity as a peer-to-peer cash system, then its later repositioning as digital gold and a haven asset. For him, the issue is simple: once market stress appeared, Bitcoin did not respond the way that narrative suggested it should.
He pointed to a period shaped by customs tariffs, currency tensions and fiscal instability. At that stage, institutional access to Bitcoin was already open through the channels the industry had spent years pushing for, including ETFs. Yet capital moved into gold, not Bitcoin. That outcome, in his telling, is harder to dismiss precisely because the access argument was no longer a constraint.
Neuner added that retail participation has fallen to multi-year lows and that many of the early evangelists have already left the market. He did not say Bitcoin is dead. His point was narrower and more pointed: his concern is with Bitcoin, not with crypto as a whole. He suggested the next wave may come from utility rather than ideology, especially if AI agents need instant, programmable payment rails instead of banks or credit cards.
Bitcoin’s digital-gold narrative faces a harder test
Taken together, the two arguments point to the same pressure point from different directions. Woo is focused on a technical threat that could alter supply assumptions and keep a valuation overhang in place for years. Neuner is focused on Bitcoin’s market behavior and on whether it can still justify its claim to be a resilient store of value when macro stress actually hits.
For years, the digital-gold idea gave Bitcoin a sense of inevitability. That confidence is now being tested on two fronts at once: security in a future shaped by quantum computing, and performance during periods when investors are actively searching for shelter. The debate is no longer only about adoption. It is also about whether Bitcoin still fits the role its strongest supporters assigned to it.