Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. There are days that I just love. I'm one of the Bitcoin OGs, and as much criticism as I have received, I’m still here. I'm one of the very few people who was around during the early days and who has read all the source code from the great Satoshi. I predicted a lot of the problems we have today.
We have this adversary called a quantum computer, and it's coming. We don't know if it's 2029, 2033, or 2035, but we know it's coming. What's the problem? The problem is that the quantum computer breaks some of the core security assumptions of how Bitcoin operates. In ordinary product design, this is not an issue. Look at the history of cryptography: you have to deprecate crypto, rotate, and upgrade. DES is a great example of that; the DES standard was insecure, and we had to get rid of it and adopt AES instead. Normally, this isn't an issue, but remember, the Bitcoiners took technology and turned it into religion.
Here's the problem: when your religion tells you to do things that are a bad idea or have catastrophic consequences, when you come up against those catastrophic consequences, suddenly, God has abandoned you. There's no greater example of this than good old BIP 361. They can't be honest. Remember, when you're a religious zealot, honesty doesn't exist.
First, they say the BIP is a soft fork. Oh no, Jameson, no, no, no. To actually do this, you need a hard fork, buddy. But don't trust me; I'm just a shit coiner. You'll discover it later on. Here's your problem: there is some truth here. As of March 1, 2026, over 34% of all Bitcoin have revealed public keys on-chain from reuse or from the old pay-to-key hash. Those UTXOs could be stolen by an attacker with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. 34% of all Bitcoin is vulnerable—about 8 million Bitcoin, give or take. That's really bad, isn't it?
So what is he proposing with this SIP? Well, first, we have to get some PK stuff in, and then we have to actually stop you from being able to spend your Bitcoin with the legacy system. We have to freeze all the non-post-quantum stuff, and here's your hard fork. They didn't want to admit it, but this would require a hard fork. Users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds and an HD wallet seed phrase can construct a quantum-safe proof to recover funds. That's a lie, and you know it. 1.7 million coins can't do that; it's not possible. 1.1 million of which belong to Satoshi.
Why? If you understand how Bitcoin works back in the day, we did it differently. Today, we have BIP 39, which is your seed phrase, and then you use a key stretching scheme, PBKDF2, to create the seed bytes. Then you have BIP 32, which derives your private key. After that, you have your derived public key using secp256k1, and then you have SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160 hash, which creates a hash160. That's your p2pkh.
That is how we do it today, but in the old system, we didn't do it that way. If you build a ZK system based upon proof of a statement of your BIP 39 key, you can recover some of the 8 million Bitcoin, but 1.7 million are not under this scheme—all of the 2013 Bitcoin and before. This is a proposal sitting on the table, written by credible people who called us all shit coiners, claiming we don't know what we're doing.
They're proposing to freeze all Bitcoin, force a migration to post-quantum addresses, and effectively steal 1.7 million Bitcoin from the rightful holders to make it unspendable. What happened to the idea that there will only ever be 21 million coins, that self-custody is paramount, and that Bitcoin never needs to change? Everything was supposed to be perfect, and Satoshi was God.
Here's the thing: it's not a bad proposal. I understand why they wrote it. If they don't do this, that money will be stolen in the 2030s—that's a fact. They don't know how to handle people dumping 30% of the entire Bitcoin supply. They just don't. These are generous numbers: 8 million Bitcoin. What about the Bitcoin that's lost? People can't rotate. A lot was lost in the early days. You cult members shit all over us for so long, and now here you are in 2026.
What would solve this? On-chain governance. Because you could have an adult conversation about it. Do you have it? No. I'm sorry, but the Adam and ETF process doesn't solve the confiscation of people's property. You know what? I know it. What are you going to do? 1.7 million coins can't be saved, even under the "steal your coins" proposal, which you're not going to do.
Here's what you're going to do: you're going to add a post-quantum signature to Bitcoin, and everybody's going to say, "See, we're quantum secure now." But that doesn't solve all the coins that are in the legacy addresses. How do you solve those coins? By your own admission, how do you resolve all these vulnerable coins? Because adding a capability doesn't force a migration.
Okay, we'll just make Bitcoin unspendable, and they have to rotate. Great. But what if they can't because they've lost their keys? Then the attacker will recover and rotate to the post-quantum address. Well, then we just have to make it unspendable together and have a ZK recovery system. The statement you're going to prove with your ZK recovery system is based upon knowledge of the BIP 39 keys, but that didn't exist until 2013.
So what about all the legacy stuff from the old way we used to do it with the wallet.dat key pool that Satoshi gave us? There's no zero-knowledge proof that I can construct for a system like that. I know it because I build these systems for a living. That's 1.7 million coins. They're just all going to be stolen and dumped.
If you had on-chain governance, you could solve it. We have it at Cardano. Polkadot has it. Tezos has it. It's a good idea, but we're shit coiners. We don't have good ideas; only you guys have good ideas, and you're never going to do a hard fork.
So you don't do a hard fork, and now you're staring at a certainty in the 2030s of at least 8% to 10% of the supply being stolen. You can only stop it with a hard fork. Bitcoin doesn't hard fork. It never has and never will. It's perfect. God is perfect.
Sorry to gloat a little bit, but this has been a long time coming. For 15 years, I started in Bitcoin with high hopes. Let's upgrade this system. Technology needs to upgrade because it's obsolete, and new things come. We can't do that because it became a religion. You kicked out Roger, you kicked out Mike, you kicked out Gavin, and you left over turned it into a religion. You got Max Keiser baptizing people at conferences, and we're all evil, even though we're the tip of the spear figuring out how to do on-chain governance and smart contracts and extended UTXO.
We're all evil, and our only motivation was to get rich while you guys stroke off BlackRock and all these other people as the Bitcoin supply gets into the hands of those big institutional investors who, by the way, have a fiduciary obligation to deliver returns for their investors. You welcomed them in with open arms. Do you think BlackRock is going to have a problem stealing 1.7 million Bitcoin from people? Enforcing a hard fork? You want the US government to be a holder? Do you think the US government is going to like 10% of the supply being stolen and dumped?
This is their investment now; they're a bag holder. Do you think they're just going to push a hard fork and shatter the network? You walked into this. You drove out all the people who wanted innovation. You drove out all the people who said we can change things, evolve things, and grow things, and you called everybody else in the altcoin space shit coiners.
Now, your core developers are telling you straight to your face—not Charles Hoskinson, the non-shit coiner, the anointed ones—34% of your supply is vulnerable to being stolen by an adversary with a quantum computer. Not hypothetically, but in the 2030s. Hot damn! We all told you; every one of us said this is what you need to do.
Now the maximalists are going to put their heads in the sand. They'll say all we need to do is add a post-quantum signature to the system, and they'll tell you that'll fix everything. It's a lie. Mike Saylor doesn't fix anything. It gives you a way of defending the system moving forward, but you also have to sign blocks differently now. What about all those legacy blocks? Are they going to get re-signed?
Technically, I can break the signatures now. Oh God, there's so much damage when your signature system doesn't work. Again, this is not a problem for Cardano, not a problem for Midnight, not a problem for Ethereum, not a problem for everyone else.
What can we do? We can upgrade, and at Cardano especially, we have on-chain governance so we can have an adult conversation. What do we do about these types of things? A decision could be made, an on-chain vote can be taken, and we can move as one people, one idea. That's the point of it in a decentralized way.
You can't. But you're the standard, right? The orange standard, your sound money. Can you think of any sound money where somebody can have a third of the money supply sitting in an unlocked house, and you have pirates sailing towards it, and no one's allowed to take it out of the house? There's no decision mechanism to take it out of the house.
You know they're going to arrive. You don't know; maybe the seas are rough, and it takes an extra year for them to get there, but you know they're going to be there, and you're just standing in the corner saying, "Wait, stop! No! No strongly worded letter!" And this guy's like, "Well, we need to move the gold." But there's no identity on any of the gold bars, so even if we invent some way of redemption, the reality is that it's going to be pretty hard to actually get all the gold back to the people.
So here's what we do: we'll just throw a bunch of it into the dump—hundreds of billions of dollars into the dump—and no one will ever be able to use that gold again. It's a free little gift to everybody in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and the gold owners are like, "You just stole my money!" I was told Bitcoin was sound money. I was told that Bitcoin was never going to be hacked, that Satoshi is God, and he never makes mistakes. Everything's perfect.
Why? Because anyone who tried to build better technology is evil. They're a shit coiner, a heretic, the worst people alive. We're all scammers. The only reason we tried to build better technology is that we were trying to steal from people. That's what you said. That was my lived experience, Vitalik's lived experience, and it's always been a lived experience for 15 years.
You told all your people this, right? You go to your conferences, Max Keiser, you baptize people. What are you going to do? The best part for me, what makes it so great, is if you ignore the problem, I win. My philosophy wins. The flood will come as you stand on the beach collecting seashells. The tsunami wave will hit you, and I win. I know you're going to put your heads in the sand because you're a cult, and I'm so sorry to say that. They're giving you the Kool-Aid.
All your Bitcoin leaders who have lied to you for 15-plus years, this is their admission—tacit as it may be—where they can't even admit it's a hard fork. It really is. You know it; I know it. I do this for a living. They can't even admit that part of it. They lied to you again and again and again. They sold you on the idea that it'll never change, never needs to change, it's perfect, and anybody who tries to change it is a heretic.
Now the flood is coming, and it's going to wipe you all out. So good luck with your coordination, Adam. Good luck to all of you in the Bitcoin space who rule the roost, your masters—whether it be MicroStrategy, BlackRock, or everyone else. They're going to come now, and they're going to tell you to hard fork your network. You're not going to want to do it, but guess what? They own you now. You welcomed them in to pump your bags, and they're going to force you to do that, and they're going to steal all of Satoshi's coins.
So sorry, Satoshi, you just lost all your money. 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. You're going to have to endure 30% of the supply being dumped on the open market.
Meanwhile, in Cardano land, we have on-chain governance. How about that? Vitalik has his own thing going on. How about that? They're pushing post-quantum. Solana has their own thing going. We all in the altcoin side of the world have our own thing going.
So you can shoot the messenger; you can demonize me, but I didn't write those words. I didn't write BIP 361. Deep down inside, you know it's real; you know it's true. Congratulations, you created this reality. Now we, as an industry, are here to help. We have lots of solutions, and if you're willing to open up the core of Bitcoin—the last time I'll mention it because for 15 years, I've been advocating it—have the courage to change things.
We have sharded proof-of-work protocols. We have Neutrino powers that enable trustless sidechains. We have extended UTXO from Cardano. We have Hydra, isomorphic state channels. If you have extended UTXO, we have so many amazing things from what I built and dozens of other projects have built. They exist; they're battle-tested, they work, and they can turn Bitcoin into a leviathan like the world has never seen.
If you're going to do a hard fork, do it right. I beseech you: throw out your false prophets, Bitcoiners, and bring in new blood. Use that new blood wisely. You can change everything and make Bitcoin what it was supposed to be. It continues Satoshi's vision, or you can put your head in the sand and let me win.
I'm arguing against myself, but I understand the consequences of 550 million holders having their money compromised. The brand damage it does to our industry as a whole and to the movement of cryptocurrencies may be irreparable. I have no social capital; I have no say; I have no power in the Bitcoin space. So unfortunately, I'm a spectator.
All I can do is make a video, and maybe your hatred of people like me will finally compel you to do the right thing. Or maybe you'll wake up and realize you're in a death cult and need to change first by firing your leaders and bringing in new leaders. Find people that know what they're doing and adopt new technology. You could be sitting on a thousand transactions a second. You could have miraculous zero-knowledge capabilities. You could bring privacy to the base ledger of the system. You could have full programmability.
But note, we're shit coiners. Can't touch that. That shit coin land has come to roost. Congratulations, Bitcoin. It's come for you. Make what you will of it. It's your choice. But I figured I'd just make this, and there's a good day for me because it's a confirmation of everything I've been saying for a long, long time. This industry finally has to wake up a little bit.
I saw it the other day, and I said, "Boy, I can't wait to make a video about this." 34% of the entire supply is vulnerable, and sadly to say, you guys are just going to have to deal with it. I think Satoshi is going to be the loser.
So, big pointers, don't worry. Your masters—BlackRock and all the mining cabals and the others—they'll make this decision for you. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to make it palatable. Then you can go back to believing the things you believe: that you're sound money and you're the standard.
I just don't like living in a world where it's sound money, but you wake up one day and your money's no longer in your bank account, and no one's accountable. They can't reimburse you. That doesn't really sound like a good system to me or a sound money system to me. But then again, I'm a shit coiner, right? What the fuck do I know?
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