Morning Minute: Google Clears a Major Quantum Hurdle, Bitcoin Still Safe

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our daily news show 'FOMO HOUR' covering all of the top stories and market action.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors rebound despite hot PPI; BTC at $82.7k
• MSCI finalized index rules putting Strategy at risk of removal (MSTR -3%)
• White House has no crypto lead after Patrick Witt announces departure
• Binance US tries to raise $100M at $1B valuation
• Jupiter rolls out Papertrade-like perps product, does $1B volume first day

⚗️Google Clears a Major Quantum Hurdle, Bitcoin Still Safe

Eight days ago an Ethereum researcher told large holders to move their coins. Today Google published a result that makes him look less paranoid and more early.

Google Quantum AI cut a critical class of quantum errors roughly 40-fold on its Willow chip, per a new paper in Science. The technique attacks what may be quantum computing’s single biggest tax - producing the clean, single-use resources certain operations need, which by some estimates eats up to 95% of a machine’s capacity. Instead of building dedicated qubit factories to purify them, Google filters: inject a rough state, run it through a gauntlet of checks, throw out the 92% that fail. What survives hits 99.99% fidelity.

Nobody is draining wallets with this. Breaking an RSA-2048 key needs errors around one in 10 billion - about a million times cleaner than what Google just showed.

But researchers are moving closely. In 2019, cracking RSA-2048 was estimated to need 20 million noisy qubits. By 2025 that was under one million. A March 2026 Google whitepaper put Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography at under 500,000 physical qubits. Willow has 105.

The irony this week is that Justin Drake’s actual fear wasn’t quantum at all. He thinks AI-driven mathematics breaks elliptic curves first, on ordinary hardware, in “months not years.” His advice: big holders should move funds to fresh addresses that have never signed a transaction, because signing exposes your public key. So crypto is being “attacked” on two fronts: quantum advancement and AI advancement.

With that said, key players are making moves and starting serious preparations. Coinbase spent this week arguing the migration has to start now. Sui is already running quantum-safe transactions on a test network. Ethereum, Zcash and Near all have plans to be quantum-resistant.

Crypto leaders will be prepared. But this was a reminder from Google that the tock is indeed ticking…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are green and rebounding after a Thurday AM selloff; BTC +1% at $82.7k; ETH +4% at $2,480; SOL +4% at $107; HYPE +2% at $82; ZEC +12% at $1,240
• Top alt movers include TIA (+27%), INJ (+27%), ZRO (+22%) and NEAR (+15%)
• Oil +2% at $97.5; Gold +0.8% at $4,200
• Stock futures are slightly green despite hot CPI and PPI this week; DOW +0.4%, Nasdaq -0.05%
• MSCI finalized new index rules for non-operating companies that put Strategy at risk of removal from its global indexes, with the final list of affected companies due November 11
• The White House has no crypto lead for the first time since Trump took office after adviser Patrick Witt announced his departure for the private sector
• Solana has increased its RWA marketshare from 4.5% to 26% over the past year according to a report from Castle Labs
• The U.S. turned into a net importer of bitcoin for the first time since 2022, per a Chainalysis report pointing to institutions buying more than retail is selling
• Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan argued bitcoin wins whether the AI trade booms or busts, making the case that AI-driven abundance bids up scarce assets, an AI-led recession triggers the money printing bitcoin “was built for,” and a muddle-through still delivers ETF and treasury inflows
• Russia is banning peer-to-peer crypto trading from July 1, 2027 under updated Bank of Russia guidance, forcing all trades through licensed brokers or registered exchanges

• Mastercard launched its Global Money Platform built on BVNK, the crypto firm it bought for roughly $1.8 billion in August, giving banks and fintechs a single account that holds fiat and stablecoins with API conversion between them
• Ledger unveiled the Atom, a touchscreen Android device it calls a “signer” rather than a wallet, running Ledger OS on a secure chip isolated from Android with a hardware switch that physically cuts the camera and mic
• Binance US is trying to raise up to $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, down 78% from the $4.5 billion it commanded in 2022 before its parent’s settlement with U.S. authorities gutted its market share

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $5M in net inflows on Thursday; the ETH ETFs saw $60M in outflows

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were green up 2-5%; DOGE +3%, SHIB +4%, PEPE +4%, PENGU +4%, TRUMP +4%, SPX -1%, BONK +4%
• Robinhood chain leaders were green up 10-20%; PONS +9% to $226M; AI +20% at $107M; Cashcat +15% at $115M; HOOKR +30%, Orbio +25% and MEME +30% led top movers
• Solana top movers included FTR +2000%, 1 +3000%, Dacity +1200% and Bubble +1800%

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Papertrade led onchain protocols in revenue with $5.98M on Thursday, followed by Hyperliquid at $3.46M and Pump.fun at $2.08M
• Pump.fun’s Custom Pairs feature has quietly pulled roughly $5.9 million of PUMP out of circulation since launching last month, about 0.33% of the float
• Jupiter rolled out its own Papertrade-like product offering 1000x leverage on crypto majors and did $1B in volume in its first day

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 31 ETH, BAYC -1% at 5.4 ETH, Pudgy even at 2.42 ETH
• Yield Field Deeds (+14%), Argonauts (+12%) and OTC Desks (+75%) led top movers