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

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins as a defense mechanism against quantum attacks. However, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson believes this approach still cannot safeguard the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. 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 misleadingly presented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. This distinction is significant, as Bitcoin's development culture has traditionally opposed hard forks, viewing them as a violation of the network's immutability. The BIP-361 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 asserts 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 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 attempt to migrate. This is because migration would require cryptographic proof that they are unable to provide. 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 would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. Hoskinson's 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.