Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork That Won't Save Satoshi's Coins

Recently, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins to protect against quantum attacks. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes this solution is still insufficient to safeguard coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, as stated in a video on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that the proposed defense mechanism is both technically incorrect and structurally flawed, making it unable to protect the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi. He claims that BIP-361, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. Hoskinson emphasizes that the distinction between a soft fork and a hard fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has traditionally opposed hard forks. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Nevertheless, Hoskinson contends that this approach is unable to rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activity. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method and would remain permanently frozen if the proposal is implemented in its current form. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the proposal, describing it as a rough idea rather than a finalized specification. Hoskinson's critique 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.