• Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says BIP 361 misclassifies its own fix, requiring a hard fork Bitcoin has never executed.
• As of March 1, 2026, over 34% of all Bitcoin supply holds exposed public keys vulnerable to quantum computing attacks.
• Hoskinson warns that 1.7 million BTC, including Satoshi’s coins, cannot be recovered even under BIP 361’s proposed ZK proof system.

Charles Hoskinson, one of Ethereum’s co-founders and a bitcoin early adopter, delivered the critique in a livestream this week, pointing to data showing that as of March 1, 2026, more than 34% of all bitcoin in circulation carries an exposed public key onchain. That figure, he said, represents roughly 8 million BTC left vulnerable to any attacker with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer.

“34% of your supply is vulnerable,” Hoskinson remarked. “And sadly to say, you guys are just going to have to deal with it. And I think Satoshi’s going to be the loser. So, Bitcoiners, don’t worry. Your masters, Blackrock, and masters, all the mining cabals and the others, they’ll make this decision for you.”

BIP 361, authored by Bitcoin developers Jameson Lopp, Christian Papathanasiou, Ian Smith, Joe Ross, Steve Vaile, and Pierre-Luc Dallaire-Demers, proposes freezing quantum-vulnerable funds and requiring users to migrate to post-quantum addresses. Hoskinson’s core complaint is that the proposal calls itself a soft fork. He said the mechanics of what it actually requires make it a hard fork, something Bitcoin has never done.

“To actually do this, you need a hard fork,” he said. “But don’t trust me. I’m just a sh**coiner. You’ll discover it later on,” Hoskinson stated.

The proposal outlines a zero-knowledge proof recovery system that would allow holders of HD wallet seed phrases to reclaim frozen funds. Hoskinson said that mechanism breaks down for approximately 1.7 million BTC held in wallets predating the BIP 32 and BIP 39 standards, which were not widely adopted until around 2013.

Those coins, he said, including what is believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto‘s holdings of roughly 1.1 million BTC, cannot be recovered through any ZK-based system tied to a seed phrase. “There’s no zero knowledge proof that I can construct for a system like that,” he said. “I build these systems for a living.”

He added:

That’s 1.7 million coins. Oof. They’re just all going to be stolen and dumped. If you had onchain governance, you could solve it. We have it at Cardano.

Hoskinson framed Bitcoin’s lack of onchain governance as the structural reason no clean solution exists. He pointed to Cardano, Polkadot, and Tezos as examples of blockchains with formal governance mechanisms capable of handling this kind of protocol-level decision through a community vote.

Without a governance mechanism and without a willingness to hard fork, Hoskinson said Bitcoin faces two choices in the 2030s: let a quantum-capable attacker drain vulnerable addresses and dump a large share of the total supply onto the open market, or push through a hard fork that makes 1.7 million BTC permanently unspendable.

He also raised the role of institutional holders. Blackrock and Strategy have accumulated significant bitcoin positions in recent years. Hoskinson suggested those institutions, and possibly the U.S. government as a reported strategic reserve holder, will eventually pressure Bitcoin developers to act, regardless of ideological resistance from the community.

“They own you now,” he said. “They’re going to force you to do that, and they’re going to steal all of Satoshi’s coins.”

He continued:

“So, so sorry, Satoshi. You just lost all your money. And they’re going to use the threat of a quantum computer to do it. Your alternative is to do nothing. And you’re just going to let the pirates take the gold. And you’re just going to have to endure 30% of the supply being dumped on the open market.”

Hoskinson acknowledged that he has no authority in the Bitcoin ecosystem and described himself as a spectator watching a situation he has warned about for over a decade. He said Cardano, Ethereum, and Solana are each working on post-quantum solutions on their own timelines, with onchain governance giving projects like Cardano a formal path to make those decisions collectively.

Hoskinson closed with a direct appeal to Bitcoin developers to pursue a full hard fork if one becomes necessary, use it as a chance to modernize the protocol, and bring in new technical leadership capable of executing the changes.

“If you’re going to do a hard fork, do it right,” he said.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。