Crypto · Unchained
Hoskinson Says Bitcoin’s Quantum Proposal Is a Disguised Hard Fork That Leaves 1.7 Million BTC Unrecoverable
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Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson argues BIP-361 is misclassified as a soft fork and cannot rescue the roughly 1.7 million BTC — including Satoshi’s, that predate modern wallet standards.
Key facts
- The more immediate problem, Hoskinson argues, is the approximately 1.7 million BTC that predate the BIP-39 standard, which was not widely adopted until around 2013
- As of March 1, 2026, more than 34% of all bitcoin supply carries publicly exposed keys on-chain, according to a March Ark Invest report leaving approximately 8 million BTC vulnerable
- Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson delivered a public critique this week of BIP-361, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal designed to protect the network against future quantum computing attacks
- Roughly 1.1 million of those coins are linked to Satoshi Nakamoto ‘s early mining activity
Summary
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson delivered a public critique this week of BIP-361, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal designed to protect the network against future quantum computing attacks. In a YouTube livestream, Hoskinson argued the proposal is incorrectly labeled a soft fork, would functionally require a hard fork, and cannot recover approximately 1.7 million BTC, including coins widely attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto . The proposal includes a zero-knowledge proof recovery system allowing holders of modern BIP-39 seed phrases to reclaim frozen funds.