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 proposed a plan to freeze 8 million coins to safeguard against quantum attacks. However, according to a video posted by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, this solution is still insufficient to protect the coins belonging to the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson asserts that the proposed defense mechanism, BIP-361, is both technically incorrect and structurally incapable of shielding the network's oldest coins, including the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi. He argues that BIP-361, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when, in reality, it would necessitate a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. Hoskinson emphasizes that this distinction is crucial, given Bitcoin's historical aversion to hard forks, which are viewed as violations of the network's immutability. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could recover them by creating a zero-knowledge proof linked to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Nevertheless, Hoskinson contends that this approach is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the roughly 1 million coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activities. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method, which relied on a local key pool rather than a deterministic seed. As a result, 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 expressed his reservations about the proposal, describing it as 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 criticism 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, resulting in contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.