Plus: Paying for your groceries with BTC
GM. Happy (almost) Easter to those who celebrate! 🐰
A quick heads-up before we get into today’s edition: there won’t be a newsletter on Monday. Even the Squeeze needs a little break to hunt for chocolate eggs and aggressively overeat.
Enjoy the long weekend! 🌸
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming – here’s what we’ve got for you today:
🤔 Can you crack Bitcoin using a quantum computer?
🐣 Freshly hatched news: pump(.)fun for AI agents, Bybit’s cleaning season + more
🧺 Market basket today
Yesterday’s US initial jobless claims came in at 215K – lower than the expected 225K = the labor market is still holding steady.
Because of that, the Federal Reserve might feel less urgency to change its current monetary policy. Translation: no rush to cut interest rates.
And when rates don’t drop, it’s not exactly great news for riskier assets like Bitcoin, at least in the short term. Rate cuts tend to pump some energy into markets, and without them, things might stay kinda mid.
This all ties into what Fed Chair Jerome Powell said about tariffs earlier this week. With so much uncertainty about how they’re gonna play out, the Fed’s strategy is now to wait and see before making any big decisions.
(We talked more about that in yesterday’s update if you want a refresher.)
And this strategy didn’t make Trump very happy btw:
But despite all this mess, Bitcoin stayed pretty stable.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas thinks it comes down to the kind of people holding Bitcoin now.
According to him, for the past 15 months, most of the selling pressure has been absorbed by long-term holders like Michael Saylor and the Bitcoin ETFs.
And they’re not in a hurry to sell – Saylor obviously isn’t going anywhere, and ETF investors, Balchunas says, are way more resilient than people give them credit for.
This kind of strong hands ownership should help reduce Bitcoin’s volatility over time.
🥚 Eggs-clusive opportunity
dFusion AI’s bonus stage hopping away after this Easter weekend, and so is your chance at an extra $1,000 USDC 🐇
Yeah yeah, the full $30K BitDegree airdrop isn’t over yet. But this part? This tasty lil’ side quest? It’s almost done.
So, while you’re out there hunting for chocolate eggs, don’t forget the real treasure: Bits, bonuses, and bragging rights 😎
You know the drill: earn Bits by inviting your friends, doing micro tasks, and completing Missions → climb the leaderboard → grab that bonus before it’s gone!
You got this! 💪
🌷 B(l)ooming memecoins
Powered by chaos, zero sleep, and questionable decisions 🤪
Data as of 06:30 AM EST.
Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.
Imagine cracking open a chocolate egg and finding a whole Bitcoin inside.
Now take away the chocolate (unfortunately 😕), add some quantum physics into the equation, and you’ve got Project Eleven’s Q-Day Prize.
That’s a global challenge that rewards 1 BTC to anyone who can break a piece of Bitcoin’s encryption using a quantum computer before April 5 next year.
Right now, Bitcoin (and many other systems) rely on something called ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm).
How it works: every time you make a Bitcoin transaction, your wallet uses a kind of digital lock-and-key system to prove that you’re the owner of your coins.
ECDSA is the system that makes this lock-and-key setup work securely.
With today’s computers, figuring out someone’s private key just from their public one would take millions of years. So, not really a concern.
But here’s where quantum computers come in.
They use the weird rules of quantum physics to process information way faster. And there’s a quantum method called Shor’s algorithm that, in theory, could be used to figure out the private key from the public one.
Now, yes, quantum computing might sound like sci-fi today. But it’s advancing quickly:
Google’s Willow chip solved a problem in 5 minutes that would take top supercomputers 10 septillion years;
Amazon and Microsoft are developing their own chips, Ocelot and Majorana 1;
A company called PsiQuantum raised $750M this year to improve photonic chip designs and optimize Shor’s algorithm.
And when there’s around 6.2M BTC (nearly $500B) held in wallets with exposed public keys, that might be a problem someday.
So, Project Eleven is trying to get ahead of it.
You don’t have to crack a real Bitcoin wallet to win. Even breaking a tiny piece of a simplified example – say, a 3-bit key (a much smaller, weaker version used just for testing) – would still be a big deal.
Because no one has ever broken even the smallest real-world version of this kind of encryption before.
So the winners won’t just walk away with 1 BTC – they’ll earn a place in cryptography history.
As Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, put it:
“We have no clear idea how close we are to a quantum ‘doomsday’ scenario for existing cryptography. The Q-Day Prize is designed to take a theoretical threat from a quantum computer and turn that into a concrete model.”
In short: this isn’t just a contest – it’s a reality check. And a reminder that the future might arrive faster than we think.
Now you’re in the know. But think about your friends – they probably have no idea. I wonder who could fix that… 😃🫵
Spread the word and be the hero you know you are!
🐰 Hop to Toronto
BitDegree’s giving away 2 PRO PASSES to Consensus 2025 in Toronto – one of the biggest Web3 events out there!
Wanna go? Head to our X account and enter before April 25.
Or live with eternal FOMO.
🐣 Freshly hatched news
🤖 Eliza Labs – the team behind the AI agent tool ai16z – dropped something new: auto.fun. It’s a platform that lets you build and launch AI agents on Web3 apps without any coding skills.
⛔️ Bybit’s discontinuing a bunch of its features – including its Cloud Wallet, Keyless Wallet, and DEX Pro. And this all comes right after they already shut down their NFT marketplace earlier this month.
📝 Arizona’s one step closer to approving a plan to build a state-run crypto reserve. The fund would be managed by the state treasurer and would hold digital assets seized from criminals.
🇸🇮 Slovenia might start taxing crypto profits at 25% under a new draft law. The tax would apply when people sell for cash or buy stuff, but swapping crypto for crypto or moving it between your own wallets would be tax-free.
🛒 Spar, the global grocery chain, now accepts Bitcoin in the Swiss city of Zug. One more W for crypto adoption!
