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, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson believes this approach is still insufficient to protect the coins owned by the network's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, as stated in a video on his YouTube channel. Hoskinson argues that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is both technically mislabeled and structurally incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, including the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He claims that the proposal, BIP-361, which aims to phase out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being presented as a soft fork but would functionally require a hard fork because it invalidates existing signature schemes that users are actively relying on. A hard fork is necessary to implement this change, according to Hoskinson. The distinction between a soft fork and a hard fork is crucial, as Bitcoin's development culture has historically opposed hard forks, viewing them as violations of the network's immutability. BIP-361 authors have described the proposal as a soft fork, a characterization Hoskinson disputes. A key aspect of BIP-361 is 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 argues that this approach cannot rescue approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate BIP-39's introduction 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 passes in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen regardless of whether their original owners ever attempt to migrate, because migration would require cryptographic proof they are unable to provide. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, has expressed reservations about the proposal, describing it as a rough idea for a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Lopp estimates that freezing dormant coins, which he believes to be around 5.6 million bitcoin, would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. Hoskinson's broader critique extends beyond the technical details, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance leaves the network unable to resolve these tradeoffs through a structured process, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.