Cardano Founder 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 protect against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, according to a video posted by Charles Hoskinson, this solution is still insufficient to safeguard the coins belonging to the network's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson asserts that Bitcoin's proposed defense mechanism is both technically flawed and structurally incapable of protecting the network's oldest coins. He believes that the BIP-361 proposal, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misleadingly presented as a soft fork when, in reality, it would functionally require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. This distinction is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has traditionally opposed hard forks, viewing them as violations of the network's immutability. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Nevertheless, Hoskinson argues that this approach is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million bitcoins that predate the introduction of BIP-39 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, which relied on a local key pool rather than a deterministic seed. Consequently, if the proposal is implemented in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen, regardless of whether their original owners attempt to migrate. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has acknowledged that he does not favor the proposal and hopes it will never be necessary. Hoskinson's critique 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, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.