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 solution to defend against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, believes this solution is still insufficient to protect Satoshi Nakamoto's coins. In a video posted on his YouTube channel, Hoskinson expressed his concerns that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally flawed, making it impossible to safeguard the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He argued that the proposal, BIP-361, is being misleadingly presented as a soft fork when, in reality, it would require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. Hoskinson emphasized that a hard fork is necessary, contrary to the authors' claims of it being a soft fork. A hard fork would change the rules fundamentally, causing old software to stop working entirely, whereas a soft fork would only tighten the rules, allowing old software to continue working but without access to new features. Furthermore, Hoskinson pointed out that BIP-361's suggestion of using a zero-knowledge proof tied to the BIP-39 seed phrase to reclaim frozen funds is unworkable for approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate BIP-39's introduction in 2013, including Satoshi's coins. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method, making it impossible for their owners to provide the necessary cryptographic proof to migrate their funds. Even Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his reservations about 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, leading to contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.