Cardano Founder Disputes Bitcoin's Quantum Computing Fix, Claims It Won't Protect Satoshi's Coins

Bitcoin developers have proposed a solution to protect against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, Cardano's Charles Hoskinson believes this solution is technically incorrect and cannot save Satoshi's coins. He claims that BIP-361, the proposal to phase out quantum-vulnerable addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it actually requires a hard fork. This is significant because Bitcoin's development community has historically opposed hard forks. Hoskinson argues that the proposed zero-knowledge recovery plan cannot rescue approximately 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including Satoshi's holdings, due to their reliance on an older key derivation method. The proposal's authors have described it as a soft fork, but Hoskinson disputes this characterization. A hard fork would be necessary, which could lead to a network split unless all users upgrade. The issue highlights Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance, making it challenging to resolve such tradeoffs through a structured process.