Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork That Cannot 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, according to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, this solution will still not be able to protect the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson expressed his views in a video posted on his YouTube channel, stating that the proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He believes that BIP-361, the proposal to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork, as it would invalidate existing signature schemes that users are actively relying on. This distinction is crucial because Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks, viewing them as violations of the network's immutability. The 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. However, Hoskinson argues that this approach will not be able to 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. Those early coins were generated using a different key derivation method, and their owners will be unable to provide the required cryptographic proof to migrate them. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has acknowledged that he does not like the proposal and hopes it never needs to be adopted. Hoskinson's critique extends beyond the technical details, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance leaves the network unable to resolve these tradeoffs through a structured process.