Cardano's Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork That Fails to Rescue Satoshi's Coins

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers proposed a plan to protect against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, according to a video posted by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, this solution is still insufficient to safeguard the coins belonging to Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson argues that the proposed defense against quantum computers, BIP-361, is both technically mislabeled and structurally incapable of protecting the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that BIP-361 would functionally require a hard fork because it invalidates existing signature schemes, despite being presented as a soft fork. A hard fork is necessary to implement this change, which contradicts Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks. The proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could reclaim them by constructing a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson argues that this approach cannot rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate BIP-39's introduction 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 he does not like the proposal and hopes it never needs to be adopted. Hoskinson's critique extends beyond the technical details, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance hinders the network's ability to resolve tradeoffs through a structured process.