Cardano Founder Disputes Bitcoin's Quantum Solution, Claims It Cannot Protect Satoshi's Coins

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins as a defense mechanism against quantum attackers. However, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson expressed doubts about the effectiveness of this approach in safeguarding Satoshi Nakamoto's coins. In a video posted on his YouTube channel, Hoskinson argued that the proposed defense against quantum computers, BIP-361, is technically flawed and structurally incapable of protecting the network's oldest coins. He claimed that the proposal, which aims to phase 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. Hoskinson emphasized that this distinction is crucial, given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Nevertheless, Hoskinson contended that this approach would not be able to rescue approximately 1.7 million Bitcoins that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including those associated with Satoshi's early mining activities. 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 is implemented in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has acknowledged that the proposal is not ideal and hopes it will never be necessary. Hoskinson's criticism 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.