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

In response to Bitcoin core developers' proposal to freeze 8 million coins as a defense against quantum attacks, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson expressed his skepticism, stating that this measure would still be unable to safeguard the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argued that the proposed solution, BIP-361, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is mislabeled as a soft fork and would actually require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. He emphasized that this distinction is crucial, given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. Furthermore, Hoskinson claimed that BIP-361's zero-knowledge proof recovery plan would be ineffective in rescuing approximately 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including those associated with Satoshi, as these coins were generated using a different key derivation method and would remain permanently frozen. Jameson Lopp, the co-author of BIP-361, has expressed his own reservations about the proposal, describing it as a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Hoskinson's critique extends beyond the technical aspects, highlighting Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance as a significant obstacle in resolving these tradeoffs through a structured process.