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 suggested freezing 8 million coins as a defense mechanism against quantum attacks. However, Cardano's founder, Charles Hoskinson, believes this approach will not be able to rescue the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, as stated in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that the proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally incapable of protecting the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that BIP-361, a proposal aimed at phasing out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misleadingly presented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. The distinction between a soft fork and a hard fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks, viewing them as a violation of the network's immutability. According to Hoskinson, the proposal's authors have falsely characterized it as a soft fork. A soft fork would tighten the rules, allowing old software to still work but not utilize new features, whereas a hard fork would change the rules so fundamentally that old software would stop working entirely, causing the network to split unless all users upgrade. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could reclaim them by constructing a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Hoskinson, however, argues that this approach cannot rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate BIP-39's introduction in 2013, including the roughly 1 million coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activity. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method from the original Bitcoin wallet software. If the proposal passes in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen, regardless of whether their original owners attempt to migrate, because migration would require cryptographic proof they are unable to provide. 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. Lopp argues that freezing dormant coins would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. Hoskinson's critique extends beyond the technical details, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance leaves the network unable to resolve tradeoffs through a structured process, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.