Google's quantum computing team just dropped a paper that the crypto world has been dreading for years, and the headline number is hard to ignore: a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, in theory, crack a live Bitcoin transaction in roughly nine minutes.

The research, published on March 30, estimates that breaking the 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography (ECDLP-256) that protects Bitcoin wallets would require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits - about 20 times fewer than previous estimates. That's a significant downward revision, and it changes the timeline for when this threat becomes a real concern.

How the Attack Would Actually Work

Bitcoin's encryption protects wallets by keeping private keys hidden from public keys. Under normal conditions, no known classical computer can reverse-engineer a private key from a public key in any realistic timeframe. Quantum computers operating with Shor's algorithm, however, can crack elliptic curve cryptography much faster.

The specific attack described in the paper targets real-time transactions rather than old dormant wallets. When a Bitcoin transaction is broadcast to the network, the sender's public key is briefly exposed for roughly 10 minutes before the transaction confirms. The paper estimates that a quantum attacker who has pre-computed the necessary setup steps could exploit that window with about a 41% chance of success in under nine minutes.

That's not a guaranteed crack - it's a probabilistic attack during a narrow exposure window. But 41% odds with a nine-minute timer is a very different threat profile than what most people have been planning around.

Who's Most at Risk

Approximately 6.9 million Bitcoin are already considered vulnerable to a longer, slower quantum attack - including roughly 1.7 million coins from the Satoshi era. These older wallets reuse addresses or have exposed public keys, which means there's no time-pressure window needed; a quantum computer would just need enough qubits and time.

Ironically, Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade - introduced in 2021 to improve privacy and efficiency - may have made things worse. By exposing public keys by default in certain transaction types, Taproot expanded the pool of wallets exposed to real-time quantum attacks. That wasn't the intent, but it's now a documented risk in Google's own research.

Ethereum is actually less exposed to the nine-minute attack because ETH transactions confirm much faster, leaving a shorter window for a quantum attacker to work within.

Where Things Actually Stand

Here's the important context: this threat is not imminent. No quantum computer today comes close to 500,000 useful physical qubits with the error correction needed to run Shor's algorithm against live Bitcoin transactions. Google's own Willow chip, the most advanced publicly known quantum processor, operates at a far smaller scale than what the paper describes as necessary.

Google has been working on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration since 2016 and set a 2029 target for completing its own migration. The research was conducted using zero-knowledge methods specifically to avoid providing a usable attack recipe to bad actors.

The Bitcoin community has been aware of quantum risk for years, and several post-quantum signature schemes exist that could, in principle, replace the current ECDSA standard. What this paper does is sharpen the urgency. The qubit requirement is now lower than expected, the timeline may be tighter than people assumed, and the Taproot complication is newly documented.

Whether the ecosystem moves fast enough to address this before a capable quantum computer exists is the real open question - and right now, the answer is unclear.

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Author: Adam Lee 
Asia News Desk / Breaking Crypto News

Visa’s crypto chief said the company is still betting on stablecoin settlements and sees volumes growing, which is one of those stories that sounds tame until you realize a global payments giant is treating stablecoins like real infrastructure. That is a much bigger deal than it looks at first glance because it means the industry is moving from “can this work?” to “how much can we use this?”

Stablecoins are easy to ignore if you only watch price action. They do not make for dramatic candles, they do not dominate social feeds, and they rarely get the same attention as whatever coin is trending that day. But they are the plumbing. They move money between exchanges, support trading, and increasingly act as a settlement layer that can cut friction out of the payment process.

Why Visa Matters...

Visa matters because it is not some random startup trying to convince the market that blockchain will fix everything if everyone just believes hard enough. It is already a core part of global payments, which means its interest in stablecoins is a signal that the technology is moving closer to everyday financial use.

That does not mean Visa is about to replace the card network with a stablecoin meme and call it a day. What it means is more practical: stablecoins may become part of the background infrastructure that helps money move faster and more cheaply across borders and systems. If that happens, the winners are not just crypto exchanges. The winners are the companies that can plug stablecoins into real payment rails without making the whole process messy.

Why This Is More Than A Crypto Story...

Stablecoins matter because they sit at the overlap of crypto speculation and traditional finance utility. Traders use them as cash, but businesses may eventually use them as settlement tools, treasury tools, or transfer tools. That is why every serious stablecoin development should be read as a payments story as much as a crypto story.

Reuters has already flagged Tether as crypto’s fragile foundation, which is another reason the stablecoin category keeps drawing attention. The market depends on these assets to stay liquid, but the real test is whether they can also stay trusted enough to support broader use outside crypto-native venues. Visa leaning in suggests that answer is getting closer to yes, even if the road is still messy.

What Traders Should Watch...

For traders, the useful angle is not just whether stablecoins get adopted, but which ones and through which channels. A payment giant’s support can strengthen the legitimacy of the whole category, but it can also shift attention toward the stablecoins and networks that are easiest to integrate at scale. That creates winners, losers, and a lot of fine print.

It also means stablecoin headlines are no longer background noise. They can affect exchange flows, payment adoption, and the long-term shape of market infrastructure. If you are trying to understand where crypto is going next, this is one of the cleaner signals on the board: less hype, more utility, and a lot more money movement behind the scenes.

The takeaway is straightforward. Visa pushing stablecoins into settlement is not flashy, but it is the kind of quiet move that can matter a lot more than the loudest chart on the screen.

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Author: Mark Pippen
London Newsroom
GlobalCryptoPress | Breaking Crypto News

A wave of layoffs is sweeping through the crypto industry, and company executives are increasingly pointing to artificial intelligence as the reason. In the past two weeks alone, Gemini, Crypto.com, Algorand, Block, and several other firms have cut a combined total of roughly 450 jobs. The messaging from leadership has been remarkably consistent: AI can now do the work that used to require large teams.

Gemini, the exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, cut 10% of its workforce, citing AI-driven productivity gains. Crypto.com followed with a round of layoffs affecting an undisclosed number of employees, with CEO Kris Marszalek explicitly stating that AI tools have made the company more efficient. Algorand, the blockchain network, cut 30% of its staff. Block, the payments company founded by Jack Dorsey, let go of 931 employees, citing AI as a core reason for restructuring.

The AI explanation has a certain logic to it. Large language models and AI coding assistants have genuinely made software development, customer support, and data analysis more efficient. A team that once required 50 engineers might now operate effectively with 35. But critics are not buying the narrative wholesale. They point out that crypto markets have been under sustained pressure, with Bitcoin still far below its all-time highs and trading volumes down significantly from the peak of the last bull cycle. In their view, the AI framing is a convenient cover for a more straightforward market-driven downsizing.

This is not the first time the crypto industry has gone through a painful contraction.

The 2022 bear market, triggered by the collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem and the subsequent FTX implosion, resulted in tens of thousands of layoffs across the industry. At the time, companies cited market conditions directly. This time, the language has shifted, but the underlying pattern is familiar.

What makes this cycle different is the genuine possibility that AI is, in fact, changing the math on headcount. If AI tools allow companies to operate leaner, then the layoffs may not reverse even when markets recover. That would represent a structural shift in the industry's employment model, not just a cyclical correction.

For workers in the space, the distinction matters enormously. A cyclical downturn means jobs come back when prices rise. A structural shift means the industry may never return to its previous headcount levels, regardless of what Bitcoin does. The honest answer is probably that both forces are at work simultaneously, and separating them is nearly impossible from the outside.

The crypto industry is not alone in this dynamic. Technology companies across the board have been using AI as a justification for workforce reductions. Whether that framing is accurate or convenient, it is becoming the dominant narrative for 2026 layoffs.

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Rowan Marrow
Seattle Newsroom / Breaking Crypto News

The entire crypto landscape just got a massive regulatory upgrade. On March 17, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued new joint guidance that creates a formalized taxonomy for how regulators will treat crypto assets going forward. The guidance takes effect Monday, March 23, and it changes a lot.

The new framework sorts digital assets into five distinct buckets: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities. This classification scheme is a game-changer, as it finally provides the legal clarity the industry has been demanding for over a decade.

Sixteen assets were specifically named as digital commodities...

Including Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Bitcoin, and Dogecoin. For Bitcoin, this is business as usual, but for the others, the designation officially removes the lingering threat of being classified as unregistered securities. According to the SEC, a digital commodity derives its value from a blockchain network and supply and demand, not from the managerial work of a central team. If a coin's value depends on its network's programmatic functioning rather than a team promising returns, it's a commodity, not a security. That distinction matters enormously because securities are subject to a much stricter set of rules.

For investors who stake their proof-of-stake coins to validate transactions and earn a yield, the new guidelines deliver excellent news. The SEC now treats staking as an "administrative" action rather than a securities transaction. This covers solo staking, delegated staking, custodial staking, and liquid staking, giving financial institutions the green light to generate yield from staking native tokens on chains like Ethereum and Solana. There are still limits - staking providers can't advertise guaranteed returns or use deposited assets for speculation - but the broad permission to stake is a major win.

The new "digital securities" designation is also a massive de-risking event for the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market. If something was considered a security before being tokenized on a blockchain, it remains a security after. That sounds restrictive, but it's actually the opposite - asset managers can now proceed to tokenize stocks and bonds knowing exactly which rules apply. This is extremely bullish for blockchains like Ethereum, XRP, and Solana, which host large quantities of tokenized securities. With the regulatory fog lifted, institutional adoption has a clear path forward.

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Cedric Holloway
New York Newsroom / Breaking Crypto News

Bitcoin gave back last week's gains over a single weekend, sliding to $68,700 after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran. The threat to attack Iranian power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is reopened sent a jolt through a market that had spent the previous week building confidence around de-escalation.

The sudden shift in rhetoric triggered a massive liquidation event. Over the past 24 hours, $299 million in total liquidations hit the crypto markets. The damage was heavily skewed toward those betting on prices going up, with long liquidations accounting for roughly 85% of the total. Bitcoin longs took $122 million in damage, while Ether longs lost $95.7 million. The largest single liquidation was a $10 million BTC-USDT swap on OKX.

The broader crypto market fell in lockstep with Bitcoin. Ether dropped to $2,114, XRP lost ground to $1.41, and Solana fell to $88.55. The steep drop highlights how one-sided market positioning had become heading into the weekend, leaving traders vulnerable to a headline shock. Eight consecutive days of gains had built up a heavily bullish book, and one Truth Social post undid all of it.

Experts are pointing to the potential for a prolonged conflict in the Middle East as a major headwind for crypto. Any disruption to global trade routes increases uncertainty across financial markets, and Bitcoin remains highly correlated with risk assets like U.S. stock indices. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to most commercial traffic, with roughly 20% of the world's oil and gas flows still disrupted. Rising oil prices could also spark inflationary forces, adding pressure to an already tense economic environment.

Times Have Changed...

Bitcoin used to behave like it was in its own world, and what global markets were doing at any given moment didn't really matter, as there were no signs whatever concerned them mattered Bitcoin traders. Those days are long gone. reacting like most other investments over the past couple weeks has made it hard to argue that it still serves as a  hedge against inflation and geopolitical turmoil. The crypto asset has yet to prove its merits as an independent safe haven, reacting more to global liquidity conditions and movements in traditional financial markets. The Fed's dovish lean from its Wednesday rate hold, which should have supported risk assets, has been completely overshadowed by war headlines.

The 48-hour window means the deadline arrives Monday evening. If Iran doesn't comply, and there's no indication it will, the market faces the prospect of strikes on power infrastructure, which would be the first direct targeting of civilian energy systems in the conflict. Traders are now holding back from making large directional bets, waiting to see how the situation unfolds.

Geopolitical shocks often create short-term panic, but they also clear out over-leveraged positions. The market just got a hard reset, and the real test will be how it reacts when the 48-hour deadline hits.

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Cedric Holloway
Global Crypto Press / New York Newsroom