Cardano Founder Disputes Bitcoin's Quantum Computing Fix, Claims It Won't Rescue Satoshi's Coins

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has expressed his doubts about Bitcoin's proposed defense mechanism against quantum attacks, stating that it is technically flawed and incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins. He claims that the proposed solution, BIP-361, is being misleadingly presented as a soft fork when, in reality, it would require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. Hoskinson argues that this approach cannot recover roughly 1.7 million Bitcoins created before 2013, including those associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, as they were generated using a different key derivation method. The proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase, but Hoskinson believes this method is ineffective for older coins. He also criticizes Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance, which hinders the network's ability to resolve tradeoffs through a structured process.