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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.

According to market news, Blockstream CEO Adam Back stated at the Paris Blockchain Week that he supports the optional advancement of Bitcoin's quantum resistance upgrade and opposes the proposal to forcibly freeze quantum-vulnerable addresses. He emphasized that "preparation is much safer than hasty responses in a crisis" and pointed out that the Bitcoin community has the coordination ability to respond quickly to urgent vulnerabilities.Previously, the BIP-361 proposal ("Post-Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset") put forward by developers Jameson Lopp and five others advocated for the gradual elimination of quantum-vulnerable addresses over five years, ultimately freezing coins that have not completed migration— including approximately 1.7 million Bitcoins held by Satoshi Nakamoto.

One of the Bitcoin contributors, Jameson Loop, along with other cryptographers, has proposed an initiative that may force Bitcoin holders to migrate their tokens to new quantum-resistant addresses, or else their tokens will be permanently frozen by the network itself. In this scenario, holders technically still own these coins but will lose the ability to transfer them. This is known as Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-361, which was updated on Tuesday in Bitcoin's official proposal repository, titled "Post-Quantum Migration and Old Signature Retirement."BIP-361 builds on the BIP-360 proposal introduced in February. BIP-360 introduced a soft fork (a type of network upgrade) aimed at enabling a new transaction type called "Pay to Merkle Root" (P2MR). This approach draws on Bitcoin's Taproot (P2TR) framework but removes key-based spending paths, thereby eliminating an element widely considered to pose risks in the quantum era.The BIP-361 proposal divides the migration into three phases. Phase A starts three years after activation and prohibits anyone from sending new bitcoins to old, quantum-vulnerable addresses. You can still spend from these addresses, but you cannot receive any coins. Phase B starts five years after activation and will render old signatures (ECDSA and Schnorr) completely ineffective, with the network rejecting any attempts to spend coins from quantum-vulnerable wallets.Essentially, your coins will be frozen. Finally, there is Phase C, which is a rescue plan still under research: holders of frozen wallets may potentially prove ownership through zero-knowledge proofs (a method of proving knowledge of a secret without revealing the secret itself). If successful, the coins frozen in Phase B can be recovered.

According to market news, Cypherpunk Jameson Lopp and several experts in the field of Bitcoin quantum security have proposed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-361, which suggests freezing quantum-vulnerable addresses, including Satoshi Nakamoto's reserves, to prevent future quantum computers from stealing approximately 1.7 million Bitcoins.The proposal is to be implemented in three phases: first, prohibiting transfers to legacy addresses; second, invalidating legacy signatures and freezing untransferred assets after five years; and finally, allowing some users to recover frozen funds through a zero-knowledge proof mechanism. This proposal aims to promote the migration of the entire network to quantum-resistant addresses, but it has faced opposition from some community members who believe it contradicts the decentralized ethos of Bitcoin and has a predatory nature.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin developers are advancing a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP360 "Pay to Merkle Root (P2MR)" aimed at enhancing Bitcoin's resistance to quantum threats, with a related testnet already deployed.Screenshots show that the corresponding code was submitted and verified on February 11, reflecting the community's proactive technical preparations for potential quantum computing threats.

According to Cointelegraph, Tim Scott, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, stated that bipartisan support has been gained for cryptocurrency market structure legislation, and consensus within the industry is the final obstacle. He revealed that communication with Coinbase has taken place, and all parties are still at the negotiating table.

According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. lawmakers will introduce a bipartisan bill to prohibit entities regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), including U.S. platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, from listing contracts related to sporting events.

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun expressed on the X platform regarding the BIP-110 controversy that Bitcoin should not be sanctified and criticized some Bitcoin extremists for hindering technological innovation.He pointed out that some supporters view attempts at scaling or functional improvements as "altcoin attacks," using moral accusations to cover up a lack of innovation, transforming Bitcoin from an economic concept into a system with ideological overtones. Wang Chun stated that in the context of the continuous development of DeFi, privacy, and payment infrastructure, Bitcoin should not become a system that is "too rigid to evolve."

BTQ Technologies announced the completion of the first runnable implementation of BIP 360 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360) on its Bitcoin Quantum Testnet v0.3.0, marking an early attempt to introduce quantum-resistant transaction infrastructure into a practical testing environment.BIP 360 introduces a new transaction format called Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), which reconfigures the way on-chain transaction data is submitted, allowing for the avoidance of public key exposure in specific transaction paths, thereby addressing the potential threats posed by quantum computers to existing cryptographic protections. BTQ stated that P2MR is compatible with frameworks such as the Lightning Network, BitVM, and Ark, while removing the key path spending mechanism introduced by Taproot.The testnet is currently connected to over 50 miners, having processed more than 100,000 blocks, and is equipped with a complete wallet tool that supports the creation, funding, signing, and broadcasting of P2MR transactions.

The discussion surrounding Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110 continues to heat up. Bitcoin pioneer and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back retweeted to remind the community that Bitcoin's upgrade capability may be suppressed. This proposal, although described as a temporary soft fork to clean up "garbage data" on-chain to curb the on-chain data inflation brought by protocols like Ordinals, may hinder Bitcoin's future upgrade capabilities because it disables the OP_SUCCESS opcode in Tapscript, which is seen as an important reserved mechanism for future soft fork upgrades of Bitcoin.Additionally, BIP-110 will limit the Taproot control block size to 257 bytes, which may affect the development of potential Layer 2 technologies like BitVM that rely on extensive script execution. Although BIP-110 is positioned as a "temporary measure," Bitcoin soft fork upgrades typically require years of coordination, and restricting upgrade interfaces during this period may have long-term impacts.

According to market news, the Bitcoin network has seen the first block supporting the BIP-110 proposal, mined by the Ocean pool. This proposal aims to limit arbitrary non-financial data in blockchain transactions through a temporary soft fork over approximately one year. Supporters believe this can curb "junk" data that occupies block space, protect Bitcoin's role as a robust monetary infrastructure, and alleviate the burden on node operators. The proposal has sparked intense controversy within the community.Critics, including Blockstream CEO Adam Back, warn that intervention at the consensus layer could undermine Bitcoin's credibility, lead to discriminatory treatment of transactions, and violate the principle of transaction capacity neutrality. He also questioned the actual support for the proposal, stating it could increase the risk of blockchain splits.The controversy escalated further when a developer embedded a 66KB image in a Bitcoin transaction to oppose the core claim of BIP-110, demonstrating that a large amount of data can be encoded even without relying on OP_RETURN. This debate highlights the long-standing ideological divide within the Bitcoin community: whether to staunchly defend Bitcoin's pure positioning as a currency or to maintain maximum neutrality regarding arbitrary uses at the base layer.

SlovakBitcoin developer and RustBitcoin library maintainer Martin Habovštiak has released a proof of concept that writes a 66 kB TIFF image file to the Bitcoin blockchain through a single transaction without using OP_RETURN, Taproot, or OP_IF. The transaction can be publicly verified on-chain and can be decoded into a complete image file.This experiment is seen as a direct challenge to the "anti-spam" soft fork proposal BIP-110, promoted by Luke Dashjr. BIP-110 is a successor to BIP-444, which aims to limit the scale of on-chain data writing, with some supporters arguing that such data storage practices deviate from Bitcoin's core positioning as a "currency."

According to Eleanor Terrett, U.S. Republican lawmakers Fitzgerald (Wisconsin), Cline (Virginia), and Democratic lawmaker Lofgren (California) jointly proposed the "Blockchain Innovation Development Act," aimed at clarifying the applicability of Section 1960 of the Criminal Code.The bill explicitly states that Section 1960 applies only to entities that control customer funds, rather than developers who merely write code. Previously, in cases like TornadoCash and SamouraiWallet, regulators had applied this provision to non-custodial software developers, leading to a strong backlash from the crypto industry. This bill will provide legal protection for blockchain developers and address the long-standing conflict between crypto innovation and regulation.

Bitcoin Core developer Murch announced on February 11 that BIP 360 (Pay to Merkle Root, P2MR) has officially entered the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal repository, marking the first time the Bitcoin development community has incorporated quantum resistance into the official technical roadmap.The proposal was co-authored by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Isabel Foxen Duke, and is currently in the review and discussion stage, with no protocol changes activated yet.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-360 has been merged into the official codebase to enhance resistance against quantum attacks.

According to relevant page information, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 (BIP-360) has been added to the official code repository.This proposal introduces the Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR) output type, aimed at enhancing Bitcoin's defense against quantum computing threats through a soft fork.

According to Cointelegraph, the number of Bitcoin nodes supporting Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110) has risen to 2.38%. This proposal is a temporary soft fork that limits the amount of data per transaction at the consensus level.According to data from The Bitcoin Portal, out of 24,481 nodes, 583 are running BIP-110, with the main node software implementation for this soft fork proposal being Bitcoin Knots. BIP-110 limits the size of transaction outputs to 34 bytes and sets the OP_RETURN data limit to 83 bytes. According to the proposal's description on its GitHub page, this temporary soft fork will be deployed for 1 year, after which it may be extended or modified. OP_RETURN is a script code that allows users to embed arbitrary data.Since the release of the latest version of the most widely used Bitcoin node software—Bitcoin Core 30—this feature has been a focal point of intense debate within the Bitcoin community. The OP_RETURN data limit was originally set to 83 bytes, but Bitcoin Core developers unilaterally removed this restriction in the Bitcoin Core 30 version. This change stemmed from a controversial code merge request first proposed in April 2025, which was widely opposed by the Bitcoin community.

Galaxy Research Director Alex Thorn posted on the X platform that a key hearing in the legislative process for cryptocurrency market structure will take place next week. Republican members of the Senate Agriculture Committee have released a discussion draft of the "Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act." This bill is expected to be merged with related legislative content completed by the Senate Banking Committee to form a comprehensive "Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act."As the Senate Agriculture Committee is responsible for overseeing the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), this draft primarily focuses on the digital commodities market, with the core content being to grant the CFTC exclusive regulatory authority over the spot cryptocurrency market, including cryptocurrency trading platforms, dealers, and brokers. The committee plans to hold a hearing on the bill's amendments on January 27 (Tuesday), during which bipartisan lawmakers may propose amendments. Although the commodity attributes section (including the CFTC's regulatory authority over the spot market) is generally considered less controversial than the securities attributes section in the cryptocurrency market structure discussions, this discussion draft still carries a noticeable partisan tone. It has not yet received the endorsement of key Democratic negotiators, although many provisions previously negotiated with Democrats have been included. Overall, the legislative text from the Senate Agriculture Committee aligns with market expectations, with its core being the establishment of a regulatory framework for the digital commodities spot market centered around the CFTC. Compared to the related topics being discussed by the Senate Banking Committee, this version has a narrower scope and is relatively less politically sensitive and controversial.

According to crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett, after months of tense negotiations among Senate Republicans, Democrats, and industry stakeholders, a bipartisan text of the 278-page crypto market structure bill has been released. Banks may gain an advantage in this round of stablecoin yield disputes.The latest draft (page 189) stipulates that companies cannot pay interest solely based on users holding a balance. Users can earn rewards, but only if the rewards are associated with activities such as account opening, conducting transactions, staking, providing liquidity, collateralizing assets, or participating in network governance. Senators now have 48 hours to propose amendments to the bill text, so it remains unclear whether these provisions will remain unchanged by Thursday.

Sources reveal that bipartisan senators are gradually accepting the banking industry's lobbying group's request to adjust the stablecoin yield rules in the GENIUS Act.The related adjustment paths include: adopting the proposal put forward by Senator Alsobrooks, which limits yields to the transaction stage (more supported by Democrats); or requiring that only institutions holding a bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) can offer stablecoin yields, the latter being considered more friendly to certain parts of the crypto industry, but controversial in the DeFi space. Additionally, it is reported that Scott is expected to submit the House version of the CLARITY Act as a placeholder text tonight to initiate the review process next week, with the formal text needing to be submitted by midnight on Monday at the latest. Furthermore, industry insiders involved in communications with Senate staff have indicated that the previous notion of "needing to pray for the bill to pass" was more of a light-hearted joke rather than a pessimistic judgment on the legislative prospects, and the final direction may gradually become clearer in the coming days.