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

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers proposed a plan to freeze 8 million coins as a defense against quantum attacks. However, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson believes this plan is still insufficient to protect the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson argues that the proposed defense, BIP-361, is technically flawed and incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi. He claims that BIP-361, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork, as it invalidates existing signature schemes used by users. A hard fork is necessary because it changes the rules so fundamentally that old software stops working entirely, and the network splits unless everyone upgrades. The proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by constructing a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson argues that this approach cannot rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate BIP-39's introduction in 2013, including the 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 passes 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 critique extends beyond the technical details, 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.