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

Bitcoin developers have proposed a solution to protect against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes this approach is flawed and cannot rescue the network's earliest coins, including those attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. According to Hoskinson, the proposed solution, BIP-361, is mislabeled as a soft fork and would require a hard fork due to its impact on existing signature schemes. This distinction is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks. The BIP-361 proposal suggests using zero-knowledge proofs tied to BIP-39 seed phrases to reclaim frozen funds, but Hoskinson argues that this method is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including those associated with Satoshi's early mining activities. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method and would remain permanently frozen if the proposal passes in its current form. Jameson Lopp, the co-author of BIP-361, has expressed reservations about the proposal, describing it as a rough idea for a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. 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, leading to contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.