Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution Is a Hard Fork That Cannot Rescue Satoshi's Coins

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers proposed a solution to protect against quantum attacks by freezing 8 million coins. However, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson expressed his doubts about the effectiveness of this solution in saving the coins owned by the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson criticized the proposed defense against quantum computers, stating that it is both technically and structurally flawed, and would be unable to protect the network's oldest coins, including those attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He argued that BIP-361, the proposal to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misleadingly presented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork, as it would invalidate existing signature schemes. Hoskinson emphasized that the distinction between a soft fork and a hard fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could reclaim them by constructing a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson argued that this approach would not be able to rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate BIP-39's introduction in 2013, including those associated with Satoshi's early mining activity. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, acknowledged that the proposal is not ideal 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 leaves the network unable to resolve tradeoffs through a structured process.