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

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins to defend against quantum attacks. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes that this proposal will still not be able to protect the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, as stated in a video on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson claims that the proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He argues that the BIP-361 proposal, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork because it invalidates existing signature schemes that users are currently relying on. According to Hoskinson, the distinction between a soft fork and a hard fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks, viewing them as violations of the network's immutability. The authors of BIP-361 have described the proposal as a soft fork, a characterization that Hoskinson disputes. A soft fork tightens the rules so that old software still works but cannot use the new features, whereas a hard fork changes the rules so fundamentally that old software stops working entirely and the network splits unless everyone upgrades. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could reclaim them by constructing a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase, a standard for generating wallet keys from a recoverable phrase. However, Hoskinson argues that this approach will not be able to rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the roughly 1 million coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activity. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method from the original Bitcoin wallet software, which relied on a local key pool rather than a deterministic seed. If the proposal passes in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen regardless of whether their original owners ever attempt to migrate, because migration would require cryptographic proof they are unable to provide. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has acknowledged that he does not like the proposal and hopes it never needs to be adopted, describing it as 'a rough idea for a contingency plan' rather than a finalized specification. Lopp has argued that freezing dormant coins, which he estimates at 5.6 million bitcoin, would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. Hoskinson's broader critique extends beyond the technical details, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance leaves the network unable to resolve these tradeoffs through a structured process, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.