15th June 2025 > > Stablecoins & quantum computing.

tl;dr

Stablecoins left, right, and centre. The existential threat to humankind posed by quantum computers just got a whole lot more urgent.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

After breaching $100k to the upside on 9th May, BTC has traded in a tight range, never really threatening a breach to the downside of that psychologically important level, and marking a few new ATHs, the latest of which sits at just a few dollars shy of $112k. When will that record be broken again?

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Stablecoins

Just yesterday the CCC noted that Bank of America had announced its intention to launch its own stablecoin, with a prediction that other financial institutions will soon follow suit.

The Wall Street Journal now reports that Amazon and Walmart are investigating launching their own stablecoins, for use in their online stores. The advantages are obvious – instantaneous settlement whilst cutting out the middlemen (TradFi banks) and their outrageous fees. Oh, and accumulating all that lovely 5% yield on the treasury bills that the banks normally keep for themselves. Given all of that, you won’t be surprised by this revelation:

The irony that the first mass use case for cryptos will be coins inextricably linked to the value of the dollar, backed one for one by dollar cash, or cash-like equivalents (short-dated treasury bills), is surely not lost on anyone. Dollar hegemony is entrenched, not challenged, by the crypto revolution.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Quantum computers

Quantum computers present a threat, not just to BTC and cryptos, but to our whole way of life. The functionality to crack the security of any and all IT systems would prove lethal in the hands of the wrong people. We would experience a wholesale collapse of the banking system, power plants deliberately shut down, and any device previously connected to the internet infected with devastating viruses. In that scenario, worrying about the value of your crypto bags would be way down on the list of productive things to do – we would be facing a future worse than the zombie apocalypse that will be occasioned by a careless Chinese virus researcher.

With that in mind, IBM’s new Quantum Roadmap is an invitation for us to get there sooner than anyone thought possible – perhaps by the end of this decade. The major problem faced by all quantum computers is an uncontrollable and material error rate. Much of the current research is aimed at correcting that error rate, and IBM now believes it can do so with Quantum Starling:

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-06-10-IBM-Sets-the-Course-to-Build-Worlds-First-Large-Scale,-Fault-Tolerant-Quantum-Computer-at-New-IBM-Quantum-Data-Center

This is the startling claim that IBM makes:

“To represent the computational state of an IBM Starling would require the memory of more than a quindecillion (1x10 to the power of 48) of the world's most powerful supercomputers.”

To try to put that in some sort of context, as it is a number far beyond our ken, it is estimated that the number of atoms contained in our Earth is 1x10 to the power of 50.

Forget A.I., quantum computers are the bigger threat to our existence, with little to no oversight or concern on the part of the authorities. My prediction is that crypto bros will be the first to address and solve this problem, a solution which can then be rolled out to the rest of society, proving once and for all that the crypto revolution is our best one yet. And if not, we are back in the Stone Age, reverting to barter, and requiring physical protection from roving gangs of bandits, so you better believe in cryptos.