Cardano founder: BIP-361 is actually a hard fork, or it freezes early BTC

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, stated that Bitcoin's quantum defense proposal BIP-361 has been mischaracterized as a soft fork, and is actually closer to a hard fork, and it cannot protect approximately 1.7 million early BTC generated before 2013, including about 1 million bitcoins attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto.

He mentioned that the zero-knowledge proof recovery scheme in the proposal relies on BIP-39 mnemonic phrases, while early wallets used different key generation methods that cannot provide the required proof, thus the relevant assets may be permanently frozen under the current scheme. Reports also indicated that BIP-361 co-author Jameson Lopp described it as a rough concept for an emergency plan, rather than a final specification.