Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork That Cannot Rescue Satoshi's Coins

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers proposed a plan to freeze 8 million coins in an effort to defend against quantum attacks. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes this plan is still insufficient to protect the coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the network's pseudonymous creator, as stated in a video on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that Bitcoin's proposed defense mechanism is both technically incorrect and structurally flawed, making it incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi. He claims that BIP-361, a proposal aimed at phasing out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork due to its impact on existing signature schemes. The distinction between a soft fork and a hard fork is significant, as Bitcoin's development culture has traditionally opposed hard forks, viewing them as a violation of the network's immutability. A soft fork tightens the rules, allowing old software to continue functioning but without access to new features, whereas a hard fork changes the rules fundamentally, causing old software to stop working entirely and potentially splitting the network unless all users upgrade. BIP-361 suggests that users with frozen funds could recover them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson contends that this approach is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 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 and would remain permanently frozen if the proposal is implemented in its current form. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his dislike for the proposal, describing it as a rough idea for a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. 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, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.