Thursday morning, Bitcoin kept oscillating around $80k. Price would dip, then climb back, then dip again — a back-and-forth tug of war, with volume no higher than the day before. The tape was unusually quiet, carrying something of the dullness of a late bear market. For some, this is garbage time; for others, it is a window to prepare.
According to Cointelegraph, Muneeb Ali, the founder of Stacks, recently said on the Chain Reaction podcast that quantum fear has effectively put a ceiling on Bitcoin’s growth [1]. His argument: because quantum computing remains without a definitive answer, risk-averse institutions keep pushing their large purchases further and further back — all the way until developers produce a credible post-quantum roadmap. He delivered the line without heat, almost as if describing something already in motion.
The timeline he sketched runs roughly like this: if no substantive progress arrives before 2028, Bitcoin enters a more dangerous phase; upgrades, moreover, typically take years — setting the scheme aside, simply waiting for users to migrate their coins to new address types eats additional time; 2030 is the year NIST has set for certain U.S. federal systems to complete their post-quantum key migration; and if AI genuinely accelerates quantum R&D, that horizon could pull forward to 2029.
In the interview, though, he conceded that some believe the quantum threat is still far off and that the current worry is somewhat overblown. He then countered that the mere fact the debate remains unresolved is already damaging confidence. That single line carries more weight than the timeline. Markets tend to fear not the threat itself, but the absence of any certainty about when a definitive answer will arrive.
Analysis of quantum computing has tracked its progress for years, and several pieces on the topic appeared earlier this year. An earlier write-up laid the case out plainly: judged by engineering reality, quantum computing remains a very long way from being able to threaten Bitcoin — error correction, cost, and engineering maturity each still have to be climbed one gate at a time, and none of it moves fast. Emotion always runs ahead; engineering always lags behind. That is the norm.
The underlying stance has not shifted much. This round of quantum panic looks much like the ones before it. Those who amplify emotion and fear have their own calculations; those who get frightened may end up paying for it.
On another level, however, price is simply the consensus of the majority. Price does not care whether a thing is right or wrong — only what most people believe. The view that the quantum threat remains distant does not mean the broader market shares it. If institutions and retail are genuinely spooked, trim positions, or defer purchases, then price is in fact pressured. Expectations get pushed down, and price follows — regardless of whether quantum computing can actually break through. Much of it is just everyone’s own subjective perception; who can be 100% certain about the future?
But what if your perception and your position differ from the crowd’s — and you hold that difference with conviction? Then it is no longer a question of who is right or wrong, but a difference in belief. And a difference in belief is, in markets, an arbitrage opportunity, the source of profit (or loss). While everyone panics and price is pinned down, you happen not to be afraid — you trust that “the cart will reach the mountain, the boat will find the bridge” — and you are both willing and able to hold. You hold until objective facts are clarified. If, in the future, people find that quantum progress is far slower than today’s emotional narrative suggests, then the discount compressed by that fear slowly dissolves; the portion that recovers is the reward of conviction. When the majority’s subjective perception is forced to converge on the facts, those who sat at the table waiting capture that spread.
Yet that reward is not as easy to earn as it looks. It does not come from knowing the year quantum computing will break through. It comes from enduring more agonizing days than others, from carrying a heavier weight of pressure. The market never pays those who rush in only after the answer is revealed; it pays only those who sat down and waited patiently before the answer arrived.
Acting amid uncertainty is a form of speculation — a wager on the future, a big bet. What if it succeeds?
And that “what if” is precisely where the danger lies. Bet right, and it is called arbitrage; bet wrong, and the majority was right while you alone foot the bill.
In English, “speculate” translates to the Chinese word for speculation, but without the pejorative tint the Chinese term often carries. “Big bet” translates to the Chinese for gambling, but again without the pejorative sense of the gambling word.
At the end of the day, acting again and again amid uncertainty is betting again and again. What these bets wager on is not whether quantum computing will succeed, but when other people’s views on quantum will change.
In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises divides the handling of the future into three kinds: gambling, which relies on luck; engineering, which relies on mastery of causal chains; and speculation, which relies on judging the behavior of others. He also argued that every human action in the economic sense is itself a speculation. In daily life, people call the gambling-leaning end “speculation” and the engineering-leaning end “investment” — but those are not the same meaning.
Returning to quantum computing: no one dares claim they can plan the future with the precision of engineering. Humans are not omniscient, and predictions of the future always leave gaps. What fills those gaps can only be a bet.
References
[1] Cointelegraph coverage of Muneeb Ali (founder of Stacks) on the Chain Reaction podcast — the argument that quantum fear has capped Bitcoin’s growth, as conservative institutions defer large purchases until a credible post-quantum roadmap emerges.