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

In response to Bitcoin core developers' proposal to freeze 8 million coins as a defense against quantum attacks, Cardano's Charles Hoskinson expressed his skepticism, stating that the plan cannot safeguard coins owned by Satoshi Nakamoto, as seen in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson asserts that Bitcoin's proposed defense mechanism is both technically mislabeled and structurally flawed, rendering it unable to protect the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi. He claims that BIP-361, a proposal aiming to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is inaccurately presented as a soft fork when, in reality, it would necessitate a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. Hoskinson emphasized that a hard fork is required to implement this change, which is a departure from Bitcoin's traditional development culture that has historically opposed such forks. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof linked to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson argues that this approach is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activities. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method and would remain permanently frozen even if the proposal is adopted. Jameson Lopp, a core developer who co-authored BIP-361, 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, leading to contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.