Charles Hoskinson Criticizes Bitcoin's Quantum Computing Fix as Insufficient

Recently, Bitcoin's core developers suggested implementing a solution to defend against quantum attacks by freezing approximately 8 million coins. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes that this approach is still inadequate to safeguard the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, as stated in a video on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that the proposed defense mechanism, BIP-361, is mislabeled as a soft fork and would actually require a hard fork, as it would invalidate existing signature schemes. He claims that this distinction is crucial, given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. Furthermore, Hoskinson asserts that BIP-361's zero-knowledge recovery plan is unable to rescue around 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including those associated with Satoshi, due to their use of a different key derivation method. If implemented, these coins would remain permanently frozen, regardless of any attempt to migrate them. Hoskinson's criticism extends beyond the technical aspects, emphasizing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance hinders the network's ability to resolve such tradeoffs through a structured process.