Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution Is a Hard Fork, Insufficient to Rescue Satoshi's Coins

Bitcoin developers have proposed a plan to protect against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins, but according to Cardano's Charles Hoskinson, this move is still insufficient to safeguard coins owned by the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson expressed his concerns in a video, arguing that the proposed defense, BIP-361, is technically inaccurate and incapable of shielding the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million attributed to Satoshi. He emphasized that BIP-361, presented as a soft fork, would actually require a hard fork due to its impact on existing signature schemes used by users, rendering it incompatible with the network's historical opposition to hard forks. Hoskinson stated, 'A hard fork is necessary to implement this,' contradicting the characterization of BIP-361 as a soft fork by its authors. The proposal suggests that users can reclaim frozen funds by creating a zero-knowledge proof linked to their BIP-39 seed phrase, but Hoskinson argued that this approach would fail to rescue approximately 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including Satoshi's, as they were generated using a different key derivation method. These early coins would remain frozen if the proposal is implemented in its current form, as their owners would be unable to provide the required cryptographic proof for migration. Jameson Lopp, co-author of BIP-361, expressed his reservations about the proposal, describing it as a rough contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Hoskinson's criticism extends beyond technical aspects, emphasizing 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.