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

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins to defend against quantum attacks. However, according to a video posted by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, this proposal still cannot save the coins owned by the network's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Hoskinson believes that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically incorrect and structurally unable to protect the network's oldest coins, including the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that the BIP-361 proposal, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork, as it invalidates existing signature schemes that users currently rely on. Hoskinson emphasized that a hard fork is necessary to implement this change, which is a significant distinction given Bitcoin's historical opposition to hard forks due to their potential to compromise the network's immutability. The BIP-361 authors have described the proposal as a soft fork, a characterization that Hoskinson disputes. A key difference between a soft fork and a hard fork is that a soft fork tightens the rules, allowing old software to continue functioning but without access to new features, whereas a hard fork changes the rules fundamentally, causing old software to stop working entirely and potentially splitting the network unless all users upgrade. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could recover them by creating a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase. However, Hoskinson argues that this approach is insufficient to rescue the approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 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 from the original Bitcoin wallet software, which relied on a local key pool rather than a deterministic seed. If the proposal is implemented in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen, regardless of whether their original owners attempt to migrate, because migration would require cryptographic proof that they are unable to provide. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his dislike for the proposal and hopes it will never be necessary, describing it as a rough idea for a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Lopp argues that freezing dormant coins, which he estimates at 5.6 million bitcoin, would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. Hoskinson's criticism extends beyond the technical details, as he argues that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance hinders the network's ability to resolve these tradeoffs through a structured process, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.