Cardano Founder Criticizes Bitcoin's Quantum Solution as Insufficient to Protect Satoshi's Holdings

Bitcoin developers have recently proposed a solution to defend against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, according to Cardano's Charles Hoskinson, this plan, known as BIP-361, is misleadingly labeled as a soft fork and would actually require a hard fork, which could invalidate existing signature schemes. Hoskinson believes this approach cannot recover approximately 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including those associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, due to their generation using a different key derivation method. The proposal suggests using a zero-knowledge proof tied to a BIP-39 seed phrase for recovery, but this method is not applicable to the older coins. Hoskinson's criticism extends to Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance, which he argues hinders the network's ability to resolve such issues through a structured process. Jameson Lopp, co-author of BIP-361, has expressed reservations about the proposal, describing it as a rough idea rather than a finalized specification.