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What will Quantum Kill First?

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by Coinbits
Friday, Dec 19, 2025 - 12:41

Every bitcoin cycle produces the same tired fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) repackaged with new buzzwords for a new generation of skeptics. Quantum computing will break bitcoin. Gold is outperforming. Whales are dumping. Technical charts look bearish. The four-year cycle is kaput.

Sound familiar? It might. Similar fear campaigns that emerged in 2018, 2014, and even 2011 when bitcoin traded below $10. The fact remains that people with vested interest in traditional finance and competing technologies are all too eager to mislead people for short term gain.

Yet bitcoin's fundamentals remain unchanged. 21 million coins. Decentralized consensus. Peer-to-peer digital cash that no government, central bank, or corporation can control. In 2011, Chamath Palihapitiya recognized bitcoin’s value, stating, "I’d like to buy more… Honestly, it’s probably the single biggest high beta investment opportunity of all." Bitcoin’s value proposition is the same today as it was then.

Meanwhile, President Trump indicated he will review the case of Samurai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill for potential pardons, following his clemency for Binance founder CZ and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. The wind is at bitcoin’s back even as the FUD thickens.

Zoom out!

Bhutan commits 10,000 bitcoins to fund new economic hub

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan announced a Bitcoin Development Pledge allocating up to 10,000 coins, currently valued at approximately $860 million, to support the development of Gelephu Mindfulness City, a new special administrative region designed to use bitcoin for financial reserves. Bhutan has been mining bitcoin with surplus hydropower for years and will use collateralization, treasury strategies, and long-term holding to fund development while preserving capital.

The sovereign bitcoin playbook is being written before our eyes

While Western nations debate whether bitcoin deserves a place in national reserves, Bhutan simply acts – mining bitcoin with clean energy and now deploying it to fund economic development. Small countries without reserve currency privilege recognize bitcoin's value proposition first because they cannot print their way out of fiscal problems. If Bhutan’s bet pays off it will show that sovereigns can use bitcoin to secure long-term prosperity.

Five bitcoin and crypto firms win federal trust bank charters as regulatory Ice Age thaws

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted conditional approval to Circle, Ripple, Fidelity Digital Assets, BitGo, and Paxos to become federally chartered trust banks. The approvals allow these firms to operate under direct federal oversight with fiduciary powers including custody services, joining Anchorage Digital as the only bitcoin and crypto companies with such charters.

Remember “Debanking?”

This regulatory embrace validates what bitcoiners have known all along: the future of finance will be built on bitcoin technology and attempts to suppress it only delay the inevitable. With federal banking infrastructure now supporting bitcoin companies, the path is clear for institutional capital to flow into bitcoin without the political and operational risks that plagued the industry under previous administrations. When the government stops fighting bitcoin and starts accommodating it, adoption accelerates exponentially.

Michael Saylor's Strategy accumulation total rises to 3.2% of all bitcoin

Strategy now holds 671,268 bitcoins representing 3.2% of the total 21 million supply, after spending nearly $2 billion in the past two weeks alone to expand its treasury. The company has made 90 separate bitcoin acquisitions since the third quarter of 2020, averaging a purchase price of $75,000 per coin. Strategy now holds 12 times more bitcoin than the next largest publicly traded company, dwarfing competitors whose holdings typically range from 13,000 to 53,000.

Turns out, mathematical certainty is a good strategy

Saylor's relentless accumulation during market weakness demonstrates the fundamental difference between those who understand bitcoin's fixed supply dynamics and those who do not. While others panic over short-term price volatility, Strategy recognizes that owning a mathematically scarce asset with inevitable global adoption is the ultimate prize.

MetaMask adds native bitcoin support as ethereum's flagship wallet collides with reality

MetaMask, the ethereum-native wallet developed by Consensys with 30 million monthly active users and 143 million downloads, announced native bitcoin integration after operating as an ethereum-only product for over a decade. The wallet, which defined the user experience for ethereum and DeFi applications, previously focused exclusively on ethereum bridges and smart contracts but has now pivoted to support bitcoin alongside its recent Solana integration.

The "ethereum killer" narrative dies quietly

Ethereum was supposed to replace bitcoin with its smart contract capabilities and programmable money vision. Instead, the largest ethereum wallet just admitted defeat by integrating bitcoin as a core feature. When the companies that built their entire businesses on ethereum's supposed superiority start adding bitcoin support, they are responding to a market that is saying, there is bitcoin and there is everything else trying to ride bitcoin's coattails.

BITCOIN ADOPTION CONTINUES

BitGo launched Lightning Network payments directly from its qualified custody platform through a partnership with Voltage, becoming one of the first companies to offer institutional Lightning access.

Billionaire Andy Beal's Texas community bank Monet rebranded as a bitcoin infrastructure bank, joining the growing field of bitcoin-focused lenders.

Grayscale expects bitcoin to hit new all-time highs in the first half of 2026 as institutional adoption drives market maturation.

Bitcoin miner Hut 8 secured a Google-backed $7 billion, 15-year lease to deliver 245 megawatts of AI data center capacity in Louisiana.

Norway's $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund backed Metaplanet's bitcoin treasury strategy, approving all five management proposals at the Tokyo firm's December 22nd shareholder meeting.

The Lightning Network reached record capacity of 5,606 bitcoins as major exchanges including Binance and OKX increased adoption.

Spot bitcoin ETFs logged $457 million in net inflows marking their strongest day in over a month amid renewed institutional demand.

HOW BITCOIN WORKS

Learn one key idea about bitcoin each week. This week:

Why bitcoin's immutable rules matter

In a recent article, economist Alexander W. Salter documented how the Federal Reserve has arguably operated outside its legal authority for seventeen years. When Congress authorized the Fed to pay interest on bank reserves in 2008, the law explicitly stated this rate "cannot exceed the general level of short-term interest rates." The intent was clear: eliminate an implicit tax on reserves, not subsidize banks for holding them.

The Fed had other plans. Facing an explosion of emergency lending that threatened inflation, officials needed banks to keep reserves idle rather than lend them out. So they reinterpreted the statute. The Fed decided that as long as the interest rate on reserves stayed below the "primary credit rate" – an interest rate the Fed itself sets – they were following the law. In other words, the Fed made itself the judge of its own compliance.

This creative interpretation transformed American monetary policy. The Fed now operates a "floor system," with flooding banks with reserves and paying them roughly $200 billion annually to keep those reserves idle. What began as an emergency measure became permanent policy through regulatory reinterpretation rather than Congressional authorization.

This is precisely why bitcoin's immutable protocol rules matter. No Federal Reserve chair, no Congressional committee, and no presidential administration can reinterpret bitcoin's 21 million supply cap. No emergency gives anyone authority to increase the block reward or accelerate the issuance schedule. The rules are enforced by distributed consensus across hundreds of thousands of independent nodes running identical code.

When Salter notes that "in America, no institution is above the law," he highlights a problem bitcoin solves by design. Bitcoin's distributed consensus mechanism ensures that monetary rules remain unchanged regardless of political pressure, economic crisis, or regulatory convenience.

COIN CHECK

What is the maximum number of decimal places that bitcoin can be divided into?

A) 6 decimal places
B) 8 decimal places
C) 10 decimal places
D) 12 decimal places

Check your answer at the end of the page.

FROM THE MEME POOL

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ANSWER

Answer: B. 8 decimal places

The smallest unit of bitcoin is called a satoshi, named after bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto. One bitcoin equals 100,000,000 satoshis, meaning bitcoin can be divided down to eight decimal places (0.00000001 BTC = 1 satoshi). This divisibility ensures bitcoin remains practical for payments of any size, from large institutional transactions to micropayments worth fractions of a cent.

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