The PQC claudepaper
v0 · subject to change · probably already outdated
tl;dr
PQC (PostQuantum Coin) is a quantum-secure Bitcoin clone. It's an experiment in what a post-quantum Bitcoin could look like — shipped as its own small, scarce coin rather than a fork nobody would run. Half the supply is sold on Base for cbBTC; the cbBTC raised is paired with the other half on Uniswap and the LP is burned. That's the whole thing.
why this exists
Bitcoin's signatures are not quantum-safe forever. Eventually that has to be fixed. We wanted to actually build the post-quantum version and see what breaks — key sizes, block weight, fees, UX — instead of just arguing about it. PQC is that sandbox.
It is deliberately not a Bitcoin fork. A fork inherits Bitcoin's holders by snapshot and inherits exactly none of their attention. A clean, separate coin has to earn its own existence, which is the honest way to test whether any of this is interesting.
design choices (a.k.a. the vibes, formalized)
Tiny chain. Blockspace is kept minimal on purpose. If there's barely any room, the room that exists is actually contested — which is the only way to learn anything about fee markets under post-quantum constraints.
Low supply. Max supply is small. PQC is meant to feel like a collectible, not a payment rail. Nobody is buying coffee with this.
Not competing with anyone. Not BTC. Not ZEC. Not your favorite privacy coin. If the experiment yields anything useful for making Bitcoin itself quantum-secure sooner, that is a complete success and we can all go outside.
tokenomics
Max supply 210,000 PQC. 50% (105,000) is premined and represented on Base as an ERC-20; the other 50% is mined on the PQC chain over time with halvings. The premine splits cleanly in two:
- 52,500 PQC — sold in the mint for a total of exactly 1 cbBTC, max 100 PQC per transaction.
- 52,500 PQC — paired with the cbBTC raised into a Uniswap V2 pool. The LP tokens are sent to a burn address and can never be pulled.
Pricing is a cumulative-floor split so the running total lands on exactly 1 cbBTC when the last PQC sells — about 0.0000190476 cbBTC per PQC (≈ $1.14 at $60k BTC). The pool opens at that same price, so the fully-diluted-on-premine valuation is ~2 cbBTC. The liquidity is thin by design; treat any "market cap" as a vibe, not a guarantee.
built on Bitcoin
Not as a slogan — as plumbing. The entire mint is denominated in cbBTC (Coinbase's wrapped BTC on Base), and the only liquidity that exists at launch is PQC against cbBTC. PQC is Bitcoin-denominated from block one.
the part where you might lose everything
The chain might be hacked. This was built end-to-end by an AI on a phone over SSH. That is not a humblebrag, it is a security disclosure. There has been no audit you should trust. Bugs are the base case.
There is no bridge yet. The PQC you mint on Base is a Base-side ERC-20. There is currently no bridge between Base and the actual PQC chain, and the two balances are not yet connected in any trust-minimized way. If you build bridges for a living: please come build one — this is an open invitation.
The 50% on the PQC chain is fully at risk. Today those coins sit on an experimental chain with minimal guarantees. If PQC ever gets real traction, that premine may be moved to a custodian for safekeeping and eventual bridging. Until that happens, assume full risk of loss on the native chain.
It might just be worth nothing. That is a completely normal outcome for an experiment. Mint accordingly.
roadmap (loosely held)
Ship the mint → bootstrap liquidity → invite a bridge team → if there's traction, sort out custody for the native premine → keep learning about post-quantum Bitcoin in public. Anything beyond that is speculation and we're not going to pretend otherwise.