Cardano Founder Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork that Fails to Protect Satoshi's Coins

Bitcoin developers have proposed a plan to freeze 8 million coins to safeguard against quantum attacks. However, according to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, this plan still cannot protect the network's oldest coins, including those belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson believes that the proposed solution, BIP-361, is mislabeled as a soft fork and would actually require a hard fork, which would invalidate existing signature schemes. He also argues that the plan's zero-knowledge recovery method cannot rescue approximately 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including Satoshi's coins, because they were generated using a different key derivation method. This method, used in the original Bitcoin wallet software, relied on a local key pool rather than a deterministic seed, making it impossible for owners to provide the necessary cryptographic proof to reclaim their coins. Hoskinson's criticism extends beyond the technical aspects, highlighting Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance, which hinders the network's ability to resolve tradeoffs and implement upgrades through a structured process.