Bitcoin embraces the post-quantum future
Despite considerable skepticism among bitcoiners about how imminent the quantum threat to bitcoin actually is, two stories this week highlighted progress toward upgrading the blockchain and protecting output from attacks.
StarkWire researcher Avihu Levy has tested an experimental quantum-resistant transaction on the Bitcoin mainnet that protects it during the short time that public keys are exposed to the mempool.
Onchain data shows that StarkWSare has spent a 10,000-satoshi output secured by Levy’s Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) scheme. It combines hash-based one-time signatures with computational lookup that binds 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.
Long-term upgrade progress has also been made to protect every transaction. On August 27, Blockstream researchers published a Bitcoin improvement proposal to upgrade Bitcoin with the SHRINCS signature project. The researchers reduced a massive, 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 lot of trade-offs.
Blockstream Research’s Jonas Nick calls it “The first concrete proposal For a post-quantum signature scheme designed specifically for Bitcoin. He acknowledged that it was “not optimal along every axis” but added:
“I think it’s a very good trade-off among the options we have now,” he said.
Solana validators vote to reduce inflation by 1.5% over 2.8 years
Solana auditors approved a proposal to double the network’s annual deflation rate. This will reduce SOL issuance by 18.9 million over the next six years.
Overall participation reached 60.7% of the eligible segment and the proposal received 67% support, 25.16% voted against and 7.84% abstained.
Known as SGP-0002 or double disinflation, the measure would 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 to roughly 5.7 years under the previous schedule.
Onchain data Presented Solana processed a record 4.2 billion transactions in July, up 13.5% from the previous month, according to the Kobeisi letter. The number of transactions has increased by nearly 2 billion since December, representing a 91% increase.
Trump Costs Investors $4.7 Billion Through Crypto ‘Scheme’
Nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen claims that US President Donald Trump has “left investors at least $4.7 billion underwater” through 2022 through his and his family’s digital asset ventures.
A new report says that investors lost $3.2 billion in his official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin, at least $1 billion in World Liberty Financial Governance Tokens, $450 million in Trump Media Digital Assets Treasury, and at least $9.3 million in Presidential Nonfungible Token (NFT) trading cards launched in 2022.
Holders of the USD1 stablecoin, however, were sitting on a $0 loss.
Trump’s crypto profits are one of the main reasons for passing the Clarity Act, with Democrats digging into stronger protections to prevent elected officials from issuing cryptocurrencies.
The Bitcoin rally is only beginning
Blockbridge Consulting Report Bitcoin’s 23% rally this past week has outpaced most AI-connected infrastructure stocks.
The three Bitcoin mining companies – Canaan, American Bitcoin and Cango – gained 41% to 67%. By comparison, CoreWeave is up about 21%, Nebius is up 17% and IREN is up 15%.
Bitcoin ETFs also gained more than $3.3 billion in August, the strongest month since October 2025 at an all-time high. Friday’s outflow ended a nine-day hot streak.
Wall Street analysts at Bernstein predict that we are at the beginning of a new four-year cycle. Bernstein’s forecast suggests that Bitcoin will recover $125,000 in both its base case and bull case, and will top $300,000 in 2029 under the base case, or $500,000 in its bullish scenario that year.
Revolut Launches Euro Stablecoin in 3 European Markets
Revolut has begun rolling out its first stablecoin, a euro-pegged token called EURR, to nearly 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 SA, 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 migrate to external wallets. It is initially launching on the Ethereum network.
winners and losers
By week’s end, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading up 1.1% at $78,420, Ethereum (ETH) was trading up 0.6% at $2,469, and XRP (XRP) was down 8.7% at $1.38. According to CoinMarketCap the total market cap is $2.64 trillion.
Among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week were VeChain (VET), with gains of 18.5%, SPX6900 (SPX) at 17.3% and Uniswap (UNI) at 15.2%.
The top three altcoin losers for the week were Aptos (APT) down 16.4%, STABLE (STABLE) down 14.7% and Morpho (MORPHO) down 13.6%.
Forecast for the week
Bitcoin Bear Market ‘Over’ As Price Metric Copies 2023 Recovery: CryptoQuant CEO
CryptoQuant CEO Ki Yong Joo flagged the first positive reading in CryptoQuant’s Bull/Bear Market Cycle Indicator since early October.
“Bitcoin bear cycle is over,” he wrote.
The index measures onchain profitability metrics compared to a 365-day moving average, including market price to realizable value (MVRV) ratio, net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL) and expended output profit ratio (SOPR). Values above zero for the Bull/Bear indicator indicate bullish phases of the BTC price cycle as profits improve.
The current cycle low came on February 5 As BTC/USD dropped to $60,000A reading of -1.244 corresponds to “extreme bear” conditions. As of August 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 as Risky in Retirement Planning: Survey
According to a new survey by The National Institute on Retirement Security, more than three-quarters of Americans view cryptocurrencies as a risk in workplace retirement planning.
D Survey It found that 77% of Americans consider crypto risky in workplace retirement plans, including 46% who consider it too risky, while 53% of employers oppose 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 age 25 and older, with results stratified by age, gender and income.
Americans look to crypto in retirement planning. Source: National Institute of Retirement Security
Real Trump Coin denies launching gold tokens, blames ‘bad actors’
Real Trump Coin has denied launching, promoting or endorsing the Trump digital gold token that appeared throughout its online presence before briefly collapsing, blaming the promotion on “third-party bad actors”.
The Real Trump Coin X account was denied on Saturday after promoting the Solana-based token and directing users to RealTrumpCoins.com, where gold was also advertised. X posts were later deleted, while the account now links to a separate domain, TrumpCoins.com.
“Trump Coin does not endorse and will not launch, promote or endorse any digital token,” Real Trump Coin said An X post on Saturday added that it is working with authorities to investigate the matter.
Polygon reveals fixed security flaws in recent hard forks
Polygon has previously disclosed several private security vulnerabilities that could disrupt its proof-of-stake network, after deploying fixes through two recent hard forks.
The vulnerabilities affected Polygon’s Bohr and Heimdall clients and included the risk of denial of service, exhausting verifier resources and errors that affected checkpoint and milestone processing, according to Thursday. disclosure From Polygon Labs’ Validator Support Team.
Polygon said the flaws were fixed through Austin and Kyoto hard forks, which were privately deployed and tested before being activated on the mainnet and publicly released.
Top magazine stories of the week
A new Bitcoin improvement proposal has been released for the SHRINCS signature project to upgrade Bitcoin to quantum security. Here’s what you need to know.
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