Hoskinson: Bitcoin Quantum Defense Proposal Flawed, ~1.7M BTC May Be Unrecoverable

BroadChain has learned from CryptoNews that on April 17 at 19:30, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson publicly highlighted technical labeling errors and functional shortcomings in Bitcoin's quantum-resistant proposal, BIP-361. In a video analysis, he pointed out that although the proposal is presented as a soft fork, it would actually require a hard fork to implement. This is because it would invalidate the existing signature schemes currently relied upon by active users. A deeper issue involves the recovery mechanism: BIP-361 suggests that users could reclaim frozen funds through zero-knowledge proofs linked to BIP-39 mnemonics. However, around 1.7 million BTC—including roughly 1 million BTC widely believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto—were created before the BIP-39 standard was introduced in 2013. This means wallets from that era lack BIP-39 mnemonics and would be unable to recover funds through this method. Despite his skepticism toward Bitcoin’s protocol governance, Hoskinson remains bullish on its price outlook. He publicly projects BTC could reach $250,000 by mid-2026, citing institutional capital inflows, adoption by tech giants, clearer regulatory legislation, and sustained end-user growth. Bitcoin’s price has recovered from a dip below $66,000—triggered by geopolitical tensions related to Iran—to just under $74,000. As macro headwinds ease, analysts are growing more optimistic. The quantum-security debate remains an unaccounted variable in current valuation models. Should BIP-361 stall or trigger a hard fork, short-term volatility would be almost inevitable. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s limitations are strengthening market confidence in Layer‑2 solutions. For example, Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER), a Bitcoin Layer‑2 project integrating the Solana Virtual Machine, has raised $32 million to tackle Bitcoin’s core bottlenecks: slow transaction speed, high fees, and lack of programmability.