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

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers proposed freezing 8 million coins to protect against quantum attacks. However, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson believes this measure will not be enough to safeguard the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson argues that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally flawed, making it impossible to protect the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that BIP-361, a proposal aimed at phasing out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would, in fact, require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. This distinction is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has traditionally opposed hard forks, viewing them as a violation 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, allowing old software to continue functioning but without access to new features, whereas a hard fork changes the rules fundamentally, causing old software to stop working entirely and potentially splitting the network unless all users upgrade. BIP-361 suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Nevertheless, Hoskinson argues that this approach is ineffective for 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 and would remain permanently frozen if the proposal passes in its current form. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his dislike for the proposal, describing it as a rough idea for a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Lopp argues that freezing dormant coins would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. 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, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.