Charles Hoskinson Criticizes Bitcoin's Quantum Fix, Says It Won't Save Satoshi's Coins

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, has expressed his concerns about Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers, stating that it is both technically and structurally flawed. He believes that the proposal, BIP-361, is being mislabeled as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork, which would invalidate existing signature schemes. Hoskinson argues that this approach cannot rescue the roughly 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the approximately 1 million coins associated with Satoshi Nakamoto's early mining activity. He also criticizes Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance, which he believes leaves the network unable to resolve tradeoffs through a structured process. According to Hoskinson, the proposal's reliance on zero-knowledge proofs tied to BIP-39 seed phrases would not work for the older coins, which were generated using a different key derivation method. As a result, these coins would remain permanently frozen if the proposal passes in its current form.