Charles Hoskinson Criticizes Bitcoin's Quantum Solution as Insufficient to Protect Satoshi's Coins

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing approximately 8 million coins to shield against quantum attacks. However, according to a video posted by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, this proposal still cannot protect the coins owned by the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson believes that the proposed defense mechanism, BIP-361, 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 Nakamoto. He argues that BIP-361 requires a hard fork, as it renders existing signature schemes obsolete, which is a departure from the soft fork characterization by its authors. A hard fork would fundamentally alter the network's rules, causing old software to become incompatible, whereas a soft fork would allow old software to continue functioning without accessing new features. The proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson claims that this approach would not work for approximately 1.7 million pre-2013 Bitcoins, including those associated with Satoshi's early mining activities, as they were generated using a different key derivation method. If the proposal is implemented in its current form, these coins would remain permanently frozen, regardless of any attempts to migrate them. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his dislike for the proposal, describing it as a rough 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.