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 as a defense mechanism against quantum attackers. However, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes this plan is insufficient to protect the coins owned by Satoshi Nakamoto, the network's pseudonymous creator. In a video posted on his YouTube channel, Hoskinson expressed his concerns that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically flawed and structurally incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He argued that the proposal, known as BIP-361, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would, in fact, require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes that users currently rely on. Hoskinson emphasized that a hard fork is necessary to implement this change, which is a significant distinction given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. The proposal suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could reclaim them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson pointed out that this approach would not be able to rescue the 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 activity. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method and would remain permanently frozen if the proposal passes in its current form. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has acknowledged that the proposal is not ideal and hopes it never needs to be adopted. 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 these tradeoffs through a structured process.