Security

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to pull back toward the 100-day line near 76.8k. The U.S. midterm election day just passed, and the market showed little reaction; trading volume was even lighter than in previous days. Overnight, Binance officially released a preliminary investigation report on the multibillion-dollar theft from a few days ago, roughly explaining how the hackers breached their internal systems. The specifics were covered in a separate internal briefing, so they won’t be repeated here. ...

There is a classic joke. A girl tells a boy: if you can get everyone on the forum arguing, I’ll go out with you. The boy posts a thread titled “PHP is the best programming language in the world.” The forum immediately erupts. The girl says, you’re amazing, let’s go. The boy replies: no — I have to make everyone believe PHP is the best language. The joke lands even if you know nothing about PHP, because the absurdity is universal. ...

Recent industry research has zeroed in on a new security question for Bitcoin: which coins are actually exposed to quantum risk right now, in their current holding state? The core test is whether the public key needed to spend a coin has already been revealed on-chain. By that measure, roughly 6.04 million BTC — 30.2% of total issuance — currently sit behind public keys that are already visible on-chain [1]. The remaining 13.99 million BTC (69.8%) keep their public keys hidden while dormant, and are not exposed under this model. (A subsequent update from the same researcher on October 8 later revised the exposed figure to 6.26 million BTC, or 31.2% of supply [2].) ...

On Tuesday, Bitcoin nudged lower around the $81k line, the tape as grindy as ever. Away from the price action, the quantum-computing front saw fresh movement — the latest turn in a story we have followed about the quantum threat to Bitcoin’s signatures. On October 16, nine blockchain companies announced the formation of the Quantum Alliance, a body meant to set a set of quantum-safety testing standards for blockchains, wallets, and infrastructure. ...

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. ...

The recent supply-chain compromise of Ledger devices (analyzed in a companion piece) has left a lot of people nervous — suddenly doubting the hardware wallet they trusted. That reaction is understandable. But it does not mean a hardware wallet is a false proposition. To see why, we have to separate the product from the idea. A product, and a commodity A hardware wallet from Ledger, OneKey, or any other vendor is, first, a product — something designed and built to meet a need — and second, a commodity — something that enters the market to be exchanged and sold. The two words describe the same object from different angles: “product” emphasizes function, “commodity” emphasizes the transaction. ...

Bitcoin continues to pull back toward $76k, with the market waiting for tonight’s US CPI print. The threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin — a sword that has hung overhead for a long time — has seen some fresh movement. ...

Bitcoin has been pulling back lately, with macro headwinds pushing it down to around $77k. A few days ago, something quietly unsettling happened on Liquid — Bitcoin’s federated sidechain. ...

BTC has been climbing and now sits near $65k. The weekend’s market was calm. But this weekend in the Bitcoin community was destined to be anything but peaceful. ...

A recently unsealed criminal complaint from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has once again ripped the fig leaf off American law enforcement. Patrick Steven Yaroch, a former FBI supervisory special agent, is accused of using his position to siphon nearly $1 million in crypto from cryptocurrency accounts linked to a “hostile nation” (reportedly Russia) that the FBI was monitoring — moving the funds into his own wallet, and even parking part of it in DeFi protocols to earn yield[1]. ...