Charles Hoskinson of Cardano 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 concerns that this solution would still be unable to protect coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson argued in a recent YouTube video that the proposed defense, known as BIP-361, is both mislabeled and technically flawed, as it would require a hard fork to implement due to its incompatibility with existing signature schemes. According to Hoskinson, the proposal's authors have misleadingly presented it as a soft fork, which he claims is a lie. A hard fork would be necessary to invalidate existing signature schemes that users currently rely on, which is a critical distinction given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. BIP-361 suggests that users with frozen funds could recover them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson pointed out that this approach would not work for approximately 1.7 million bitcoins created before 2013, including those associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, as they were generated using a different key derivation method. These early coins would remain frozen even if their owners attempted to migrate, as they would be unable to provide the necessary cryptographic proof. Jameson Lopp, a core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has acknowledged that the proposal is not ideal and hopes it will never be needed, describing it as a rough contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. 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, leading to contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.