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

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers proposed a plan to freeze 8 million coins to defend against quantum attacks. However, according to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, this plan is still insufficient to protect the coins belonging to the network's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, as stated in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson believes that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically mislabeled and structurally incapable of protecting the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He argues that BIP-361, the proposal to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, would functionally require a hard fork because it invalidates existing signature schemes. A hard fork is necessary to implement this change, according to Hoskinson. The distinction between a hard fork and a soft fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks. BIP-361 authors have described the proposal as a soft fork, but Hoskinson disputes this characterization. The 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. However, Hoskinson argues that this approach cannot rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate BIP-39's introduction in 2013, including the roughly 1 million coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activity. Those early coins were generated using a different key derivation method, 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. 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. 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.