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

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins as a defense mechanism against quantum attacks. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes that this solution is still insufficient to protect the coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the network's pseudonymous creator, as stated in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that the proposed defense against quantum computers, BIP-361, is both technically mislabeled and structurally incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that BIP-361 would functionally require a hard fork because it invalidates existing signature schemes that users are actively relying on. Hoskinson emphasized that a hard fork is necessary to implement this solution, which contradicts the characterization of BIP-361 as a soft fork by its authors. The distinction between a hard fork and a soft fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks, viewing them as violations of the network's immutability. A soft fork tightens the rules so that old software still works but cannot use the new features, whereas a hard fork changes the rules so fundamentally that old software stops working entirely and the network splits unless everyone upgrades. BIP-361 proposes 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 is unable to 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. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method from the original Bitcoin wallet software, which relied on a local key pool rather than a deterministic seed. As a result, if the proposal passes in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen regardless of whether their original owners ever attempt to migrate. 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, describing it as 'a rough idea for a contingency plan' rather than a finalized specification. Lopp argues that freezing dormant coins, which he estimates at 5.6 million bitcoin, would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. 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, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.