Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork That Fails to Protect Satoshi's Holdings

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers proposed a solution to defend against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, Cardano's Charles Hoskinson expressed his skepticism in a video, stating that this approach cannot protect the network's oldest coins, including Satoshi Nakamoto's estimated 1 million bitcoins. Hoskinson argued that the proposed BIP-361 is mislabeled as a soft fork, as it would require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. He emphasized that this distinction is crucial, given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. The BIP-361 proposal suggests using zero-knowledge proofs tied to BIP-39 seed phrases to reclaim frozen funds, but Hoskinson claims this method is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million bitcoins predating BIP-39's introduction in 2013, including Satoshi's coins. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method, making it impossible for their owners to provide the necessary cryptographic proof to migrate them. Jameson Lopp, the core developer behind BIP-361, has expressed his own reservations about the proposal, describing it as a rough 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, leading to contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.