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 this approach will not be able to safeguard the coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the network's pseudonymous creator, as stated in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally incapable of protecting the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that BIP-361, a proposal aimed at phasing 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 emphasized that the distinction between a soft fork and a hard fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks. The proposal suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Nevertheless, 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, which would make it impossible for their owners to provide the necessary cryptographic proof to migrate their funds. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has acknowledged that the proposal is not ideal and hopes it will never need to be adopted. 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.