Cardano Founder Challenges Bitcoin's Quantum Solution, Claims It Won't Rescue Satoshi's Coins

A recent proposal by Bitcoin's core developers to freeze 8 million coins as a defense against quantum attacks has been met with skepticism by Cardano's Charles Hoskinson, who claims it is technically flawed and will not safeguard the oldest coins in the network, including Satoshi Nakamoto's holdings. According to Hoskinson, the proposed solution, known as BIP-361, is being mislabeled as a soft fork when it would, in fact, require a hard fork due to its impact on existing signature schemes. Hoskinson's argument hinges on the distinction between soft and hard forks, with the former allowing old software to continue functioning, albeit without access to new features, and the latter fundamentally altering the network's rules, rendering old software obsolete. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could recover them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase, but Hoskinson argues that this approach is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million bitcoins predating 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, making it impossible for their owners to provide the necessary cryptographic proof to reclaim them. Jameson Lopp, co-author of BIP-361, has expressed reservations about the proposal, characterizing it as a rough 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.