Bitcoin embraces post-quantum future

Despite considerable skepticism among Bitcoiners about how close the quantum threat to Bitcoin actually is, two stories this week highlighted the progress being made toward upgrading the blockchain and protecting outputs from attack.

The concern behind that skepticism is real but contested: Bitcoin's elliptic curve cryptography (ECDSA) is theoretically vulnerable to a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, and funds in addresses with exposed public keys — including Satoshi-era wallets thought to hold roughly a million BTC — are considered the most at risk. The debate is over the timeline of such machines, not the math.

StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy tested an experimental quantum-resistant transaction on the Bitcoin mainnet that protects it during the brief period when public keys are exposed in the mempool.

Onchain data shows that StarkWare spent a 10,000-satoshi output protected by Levy's Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) scheme. It combines hash-based one-time signatures with computational searches that bind an authorization to a specific transaction. While it works, it's more of a last resort than a practical measure, as each transaction takes hours and costs between $150 and $200.

There has also been progress on long-term upgrades to protect every transaction. On August 27, Blockstream researchers published a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal to upgrade Bitcoin with the SHRINCS signature scheme. The researchers slimmed down a huge, hash-based post-quantum signature by about 13.23 times — an impressive effort, but the SHRINCS signature is still at least nine times larger than Bitcoin's existing signatures and comes with a number of trade-offs.

Signature size matters because larger signatures increase transaction weight, which raises fees and reduces the number of transactions that fit in each block — a key reason post-quantum schemes have been slow to reach Bitcoin, where any consensus change requires broad agreement across developers, miners and node operators.

Blockstream Research's Jonas Nick called it "the first concrete proposal for a post-quantum signature scheme designed specifically for Bitcoin." He conceded it was "not optimal along every axis" but added: "I do think it is a very good trade-off among the options we have now."

Solana validators vote to cut inflation to 1.5% in 2.8 years

Solana validators have approved a proposal to double the network's annual disinflation rate. This will reduce issuance by 18.9 million SOL over the next six years.

Overall participation reached 60.7% of eligible stake, and the proposal received 67% support, with 25.16% voting against and 7.84% abstaining. Known as SGP-0002, or Double Disinflation, the measure will increase Solana's annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%.

Under the new schedule, Solana is expected to reach its 1.5% terminal inflation rate in about 2.8 years, compared with roughly 5.7 years under the previous schedule.

Onchain data presented by The Kobeissi Letter showed that Solana processed a record 4.2 billion transactions during July, up 13.5% from the month before. Transaction counts have risen by roughly 2 billion since December, representing a 91% increase.

The vote continues a supply-tightening path Solana has been on since 2024, when an earlier proposal (SIMD-228) shifted staking rewards from a fixed rate to a market-based mechanism — part of a broader effort by major proof-of-stake networks to make issuance more responsive to actual staking participation.

Trump cost investors $4.7B through crypto 'schemes'

Nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen claims that US President Donald Trump "left investors at least an estimated $4.7 billion underwater" since 2022 through his and his family's digital asset ventures.

A new report states that investors lost $3.2 billion via his Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin, at least $1 billion on the World Liberty Financial governance token, $450 million on Trump Media's digital asset treasury, and at least $9.3 million on the president's nonfungible token (NFT) trading cards launched in 2022.

Holders of the USD1 stablecoin, however, were sitting on $0 losses.

Trump's crypto profits are one of the key factors holding up passage of the CLARITY Act, with Democrats digging in on stronger protections to prevent elected officials from issuing cryptocurrencies. The CLARITY Act is the market-structure legislation that would split digital asset oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; it has passed the House but remains stalled in the Senate amid the conflict-of-interest fight.

Bitcoin rally only just getting started

BlocksBridge Consulting reported this week that Bitcoin's 23% rally over the past week had outpaced most AI-linked infrastructure stocks.

Three beaten-down Bitcoin mining companies — Canaan, American Bitcoin and Cango — gained between 41% and 67%. By comparison, CoreWeave rose about 21%, Nebius gained 17% and IREN advanced 15%.

The Bitcoin ETFs have also minted more than $3.3 billion in August, for the strongest month since October 2025's all-time high. Outflows on Friday ended a nine-day hot streak, however.

Wall Street analysts from Bernstein predict we are at the start of a new four-year cycle. Bernstein's forecast suggests Bitcoin will reclaim $125,000 under both its base-case and bull-case scenarios, and will peak at $300,000 in 2029 under the base case, or top $500,000 that year under its bullish scenario.

Revolut rolls out euro stablecoin in 3 European markets

Revolut has begun rolling out its first stablecoin, a euro-pegged token called EURR, to around 2 million customers in Denmark, Poland and Portugal.

The phased rollout is expected to expand to other European Economic Area (EEA) markets later this year.

EURR is issued by Bridge Building S.A., the Luxembourg-based entity of Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge. Revolut said EURR will be integrated into its retail app, with plans to support multiple blockchain networks and transfers to external wallets. It is launching initially on the Ethereum network.

The launch places Revolut among the growing roster of mainstream fintechs issuing their own stablecoins, a trend that accelerated after the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation came into full effect in late 2024 and provided a compliant framework for e-money tokens such as EURR.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is up 1.1% to trade at $78,420, Ethereum (ETH) is up 0.6% to trade at $2,469, and XRP (XRP) is down 8.7% to $1.38. The total market cap is at $2.64 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are VeChain (VET) with an 18.5% gain, SPX6900 (SPX) on 17.3%, and Uniswap (UNI) on 15.2%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Aptos (APT), which was down 16.4%, Stable (STABLE) down 14.7%, and Morpho (MORPHO) down 13.6%.

Prediction of the Week

Bitcoin bear market 'over' as price metric copies 2023 recovery: CryptoQuant CEO

CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju has flagged the first positive reading on CryptoQuant's Bull/Bear Market Cycle Indicator since early October.

"The Bitcoin bear cycle is over," he wrote.

The indicator measures onchain profitability metrics in comparison to a 365-day moving average, including the market value to realized value (MVRV) ratio, net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL) and the spent output profit ratio (SOPR). Values above zero for the Bull/Bear indicator point to bullish phases in the BTC price cycle as profitability improves.

Current cycle lows came on Feb. 5 as BTC/USD fell to $60,000, with a reading of -1.244 corresponding to "extreme bear" conditions. As of Aug. 26, the Bull/Bear indicator displayed a positive reading of 0.042, placing it in its "bull" bracket.

FUD of the Week

77% of Americans see crypto in retirement plans as risky: Survey

More than three-quarters of Americans view cryptocurrency in workplace retirement plans as risky, according to a new survey from The National Institute on Retirement Security.

The survey found that 77% of Americans consider crypto in workplace retirement plans risky, including 46% who view it as very risky, while 53% oppose employers offering crypto as an investment option.

The survey was conducted by Greenwald Research between Oct. 24 and Nov. 14, 2025, and included 1,203 Americans aged 25 and older, with results weighted by age, gender and income.

Source: National Institute on Retirement Security

Real Trump Coins denies launching GOLD token, blames 'bad actors'

Real Trump Coins has denied launching, promoting or authorizing the Trump Digital GOLD token that briefly appeared across its online presence before collapsing, blaming the promotion on "third-party bad actors."

The denial came after the Real Trump Coins X account promoted the Solana-based token on Saturday and directed users to RealTrumpCoins.com, where GOLD was also advertised. The X posts were later deleted, while the account now links to a separate domain, TrumpCoins.com.

"Trump Coins has not authorized and will not launch, promote, or authorize any digital token," Real Trump Coins said in an X post on Saturday, adding that it was working with authorities to investigate the matter.

Polygon discloses security flaws fixed in recent hard forks

Polygon has disclosed several previously private security vulnerabilities that could have disrupted its proof-of-stake network, after deploying fixes through two recent hard forks.

The vulnerabilities affected Polygon's Bor and Heimdall clients and included denial-of-service risks, validator resource exhaustion and flaws affecting checkpoint and milestone processing, according to a Thursday disclosure from Polygon Labs' Validators Support Team.

Polygon said the flaws were fixed through the Austin and Kyoto hard forks, which were deployed privately and tested before being activated on mainnet and publicly disclosed.

The practice of disclosing vulnerabilities only after fixes are live is standard in the industry, mirroring the approach used by other major protocols, where delayed disclosure is intended to give operators time to upgrade before attackers can study the patched code.

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