Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork That Cannot Rescue Satoshi's Coins

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing around 8 million coins to protect against quantum attacks. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes this approach will not be able to safeguard the coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, as stated in a video he posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that the proposed solution to defend against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally incapable of protecting the oldest coins on the network, including the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that BIP-361, a proposal to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes that users are currently relying on. Hoskinson emphasized that a hard fork is necessary to implement this solution, which is a significant distinction given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. The proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could recover them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson argues that this method will not be able to recover around 1.7 million bitcoin that were created before the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the approximately 1 million coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activities. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method and would remain permanently frozen if the proposal is implemented in its current form. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his reluctance towards the proposal, describing it as a rough idea for a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Hoskinson's criticism extends beyond the technical aspects, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance hinders the network's ability to resolve tradeoffs through a structured process, resulting in contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.