Cardano Founder Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork that Cannot Protect Satoshi's Coins

In response to Bitcoin core developers' proposal to freeze 8 million coins as a defense against quantum attacks, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson expressed his skepticism about the plan's ability to protect the network's oldest coins, including Satoshi Nakamoto's holdings, in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argued that the proposed solution, BIP-361, is mislabeled as a soft fork and would actually require a hard fork, as it invalidates existing signature schemes. He stated that this approach would not be able to rescue roughly 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including those associated with Satoshi's early mining activity, due to their use of a different key derivation method. The BIP-361 proposal suggests using zero-knowledge proofs tied to BIP-39 seed phrases to reclaim frozen funds, but Hoskinson believes this method is ineffective for the older coins. 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.