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

Bitcoin's core developers have proposed a plan to protect 8 million coins from quantum attacks. However, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson believes this plan is technically flawed and cannot safeguard the network's oldest coins, including those attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson argues that BIP-361 is misclassified as a soft fork and would actually require a hard fork, as it renders existing signature schemes obsolete. He claims this approach is incapable of recovering roughly 1.7 million pre-2013 bitcoins, including Satoshi's holdings, due to their reliance on an older key derivation method. The proposal's authors suggest using zero-knowledge proofs tied to BIP-39 seed phrases for recovery, but Hoskinson asserts this method is ineffective for coins generated before 2013. Jameson Lopp, the core developer behind BIP-361, has expressed his own reservations about the proposal, describing it as a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Hoskinson's criticism extends to Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance, which he believes hinders the network's ability to navigate contentious upgrades.