Quantum Computing

Overnight, Bitcoin failed to hold above $80k and fell back. A new term surfaced in the developer mailing list. On November 4, developer Cory Fields proposed a mechanism called the “quantum mine” on the bitcoin-dev mailing list[1]. He works at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative and is also a Bitcoin Core developer. The proposal has not yet been written up as a formal improvement proposal, and he himself says it is only a thought experiment. ...

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. ...

Every few months the same panic returns. This time it was reignited by an interview clip in which Justin Sun argued that quantum computing and AI breakthroughs are reasons to be bearish on Bitcoin. Social feeds lit up with “quantum panic” all over again. Some were terrified, convinced the countdown to cracking Bitcoin’s private keys had already begun, with talk of it happening within one to one and a half years. On Monday, however, Bitcoin was just grinding along above $80,000 — calm, with no sign of the panic the narrative promised. ...