Cardano Founder Disputes Bitcoin's Quantum Solution, Claims It Won't Protect Satoshi's Holdings

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins as a defense mechanism against quantum attacks. However, Cardano's founder, Charles Hoskinson, believes this approach is still inadequate to protect Satoshi Nakamoto's coins, as stated in a video on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that Bitcoin's proposed quantum defense is both technically incorrect and structurally flawed, making it incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the roughly 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi. He claims that BIP-361, a proposal aimed at phasing out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when, in reality, it would require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes. A hard fork, according to Hoskinson, is necessary to implement this change, which contradicts Bitcoin's development culture that has historically opposed such forks. The BIP-361 proposal suggests that users with frozen funds could recover them by creating a zero-knowledge proof linked to their BIP-39 seed phrase. Nevertheless, Hoskinson asserts that this approach is ineffective for approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activities. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method and would remain permanently frozen if the proposal is implemented in its current form. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the proposal, describing it as a rough idea rather than a finalized specification. Lopp estimates that 5.6 million bitcoin are dormant and argues that freezing them would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. Hoskinson's criticism extends beyond the technical aspects, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance hinders the network's ability to resolve tradeoffs through a structured process, leading to contentious upgrades being negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.