Mark Cuban Sells Bitcoin, Cites Disappointment; Quantum Defense Proposal for Satoshi Coins

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Today’s top news:

Crypto majors chop while HYPE leads; BTC at $77k

HYPE hits new ATH over $62 yesterday, ETF flows hit $70M

Mark Cuban sells his BTC, cites disappointment vs gold & with broader crypto

New quantum solution proposed by American Fortress, could protect Satoshi coins

MegaETH shuts down its Terminal program and ends points season early

Mark Cuban Sold Most of His Bitcoin

Mark Cuban sold most of his Bitcoin holdings after concluding it failed to act as a hedge against a weakening dollar and geopolitical turmoil, particularly during the recent Iran conflict.

The billionaire investor, who once described Bitcoin as a superior version of gold and held a crypto portfolio heavily weighted toward it, said the divergence between gold and Bitcoin during the Iran war was the breaking point. Gold surged while Bitcoin struggled to maintain momentum despite a weaker dollar, the exact scenario where the “digital gold” thesis was supposed to deliver.

Cuban commented: “I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold, but gold just blew up and went to $5,000, and Bitcoin dropped. Every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should’ve gone up. It’s not the hedge I expected it to be.”

His disappointment spans across crypto, which he feels still has not found “an application for grandma.” That includes NFTs, which while he refrained from calling them dead, did say they are “disappointing.”

That view is becoming a more common one, as more 5-10 year holders start to capitulate in 2026. And unfortunately, the trend seems more likely to continue than to reverse, at least near term.

A Startup Says It Can Save Satoshi’s 1.1 Million Bitcoin From Quantum Attackers

Researchers at AmericanFortress published a proposal claiming their multi-layer quantum defense system can protect Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 million dormant Bitcoin (and all the others) from future quantum attacks via a soft fork that would freeze and protect exposed addresses.

The problem they’re solving is the “Satoshi problem” that has haunted every quantum defense proposal so far. Bitcoin’s roughly 6.9 million coins in addresses with exposed public keys are directly vulnerable to any quantum computer powerful enough to run Shor’s algorithm against secp256k1 elliptic curve cryptography. BIP-361, authored by Jameson Lopp, proposed freezing those coins if they don’t migrate to quantum, but Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pointed out a fatal flaw: “1.7 million coins can’t do that. It’s not possible. 1.1 million of which belong to Satoshi.” If Satoshi is dead or the keys are lost, there’s no way to migrate voluntarily.

AmericanFortress’s approach is different. Rather than requiring migration or imposing a freeze, their proposal uses a soft fork to create a protected dormancy state, essentially putting a quantum-resistant cryptographic lock around vulnerable addresses without requiring the owner to move the coins or prove control. The system layers multiple post-quantum signature schemes to prevent any quantum attacker from exploiting exposed public keys.

The proposal is in early-stage peer review and has not been submitted as a formal BIP. The parallel PACTs proposal from Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson offers another path, letting holders timestamp cryptographic proofs of ownership today and later unlock coins via quantum-resistant STARK proofs if the network freezes vulnerable addresses.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

Crypto majors are flat while HYPE leads again; BTC even at $77k; ETH +1% at $2,130; SOL +2% at $88; HYPE +5% at $61

NEAR (+32%), FET (+13%), TIA (+13%) and WLD (+13%) led top movers

Oil -2% at $98.50; Gold even at $4,513

Stock futures are green with the Nasdaq up slightly as the US and Iran signal some peace progress

Blockchain.com confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC Thursday for a US IPO expected before year-end, joining SpaceX, Kraken, and Grayscale in the 2026 crypto listing wave; it previously considered going public at a $14B valuation in 2022 before a 2023 Series E round reset that figure significantly lower

a16z-backed Syndicate Labs announced it is shutting down Thursday after five years building Ethereum rollup developer infrastructure, citing a structural collapse in demand for reusable rollup tooling

The Bitcoin ETFs saw $100M in net ouflows on Thursday; the ETH ETFs saw $33M in outflows

The HYPE ETFs saw $16M in net inflows on Thursday, now nearing $70M cumulative

Meme Coin Tracker

Meme leaders were mostly green; DOGE +2%, SHIB +2%, PEPE +2%, PENGU +5%, TRUMP +5%, BONK +4%, SPX +4%, FARTCOIN +5%

Worldcup (+60%), Manifest (+30%) and Clude (+30%) led notable movers on Solana

Base movers included Supergemma (+33x), grantr (+160%), Pitch (+67%) and Robotmoney (+50%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

MegaETH announced the wind down of its terminal program and conclude its points season early

Polymarket had a private key exploited for $700k earlier this morning, with the situation developing

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?