Morning Minute: Bitcoin's New $15M Quantum Defense Fund

By Tyler Warner

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.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are slightly red as ETF flows weaken; BTC at $65k
• BTC ETFs see $225M in net outflows, break inflow streak; ETH sees $26M inflow
• Clarity Act will likely miss August recess cutoff date, Thune says
• MoonPay announces partnership with Discover to unlock crypto access for millions of cardholders
• Vlad Tenev’s X hacked to post “vladhood” meme coin, sees $30M volume

🔐 BlackRock, Coinbase, and Strategy Back a $15 Million Bitcoin Quantum Defense Fund

Nine of the biggest names in finance and crypto formed the Bitcoin Security Consortium, pledging a combined $15 million over three years to fund Bitcoin security research and open-source development focused on quantum computing defense.

The members are BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Galaxy. The consortium won’t hold or allocate the money, each member picks which developers and researchers to fund directly, and the group says it will not direct Bitcoin development or take positions on protocol changes. Mike Schmidt of the developer-funding nonprofit Brink will coordinate on a volunteer basis. BlackRock’s head of digital assets, Robert Mitchnick, said Core developers “do incredibly important work” and that the group would make more funding available for Bitcoin’s long-term security.

Quantum computers capable of breaking Bitcoin’s cryptography don’t exist today. But roughly 6.9M BTC ($450B) sit in addresses that would be vulnerable if one arrives, and any fix requires coordinating changes across wallets, exchanges, miners, and users, which takes years. That’s why work is starting now on proposals like BIP 360, a new output type designed to limit public key exposure, alongside post-quantum signature schemes.

It makes sense for this particular group to back quantum defense research. BlackRock runs the largest spot Bitcoin ETF, alongside Fidelity and ARK. Strategy is the biggest DAT and holds 843,775 coins. Coinbase custodies much of the institutional supply and most of their products revolve around crypto trading. These firms have billions in client and shareholder exposure to an asset whose long-term security is now something they have to answer for—which makes funding Core developers cheap insurance.

It’s been widely known that the quantum risk to Bitcoin is a massive overhang for the foreseeable future, and many investors have come out and flatly said Bitcoin is not investable until quantum is solved. Many don’t believe the core BTC devs can move fast enough (and reach agreement) to make the type of changes needed to solve quantum in time. Enter those with the most skin in the game. If anyone can get it done, it’s likely this group…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly red as interest rate hike odds rattle markets; BTC -1% at $65k; ETH -2% at $1,880; SOL -3% at $75; HYPE -1% at $58.40
• BEAT (+4%), HASH (+4%) and INJ (+3%) led top movers
• Oil even at $90; Gold -1% at $4,060
• Stock futures are slightly green; DOW +0.4%, Nasdaq +0.1%
• The CLARITY Act is expected to miss its window before the summer recess, with Majority Leader Thune saying he’d like to “at least get Clarity started” but conceding the August 7 deadline likely slips
• Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon backed the CLARITY Act despite the banking industry’s objections to its stablecoin yield rules, breaking with peers who’ve lobbied against those provisions
• Brian Armstrong warned that if the Clarity Act doesn’t pass, part of Coinbase would have to move offshore
• Coinbase opened AI agent payments to corporate customers, letting businesses accept money from autonomous agents
• Uniswap pushed deeper into tokenized assets with permissioned trading pools, letting regulated real-world assets trade in gated venues rather than open liquidity

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $225M in net outflows on Thursday, breaking a 7-day inflow streak; the ETH ETFs saw $26M in inflows
• Japan might launch its first Bitcoin ETF as soon as 2028 as the country revises its crypto investment rules

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly red; DOGE -4%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -3%, PENGU -3%, TRUMP -3%, BONK -2%
• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account was hacked to promote a token during the Robinhood Chain meme coin frenzy, with the “vladhood” token seeing $30M in volume
• Robinhood chain was led by PONS (+36%) and TENDIES (+49%); Cashcat +7% to $52M
• Solana leaders included looong (+43x), Cupsey (+70%) and World (+30%); ANSEM even at $175M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Discover Network partnered with MoonPay to let US cardholders buy thousands of supported tokens directly, including BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, TRX, HYPE, and ZEC
• Stripe is in talks to buy OpenRouter for up to $10 billion, per The Information, roughly 8x its last valuation; the AI-model marketplace is led by OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah
• Kaito announced that it has entered into a “data agreement with X to power a wide range of use cases”

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 32 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.6 ETH, Pudgy -2% at 4.1 ETH; Hypurr’s even at 185 HYPE
• Kaito Yapybaras (+93%) and TTT (+42%) led top movers
• FWA is up 14% on the day to $8M, with the protocol seeing over 30,000 NFT purchases and 1,500 ETH in volume through its first 4 days

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