Efforts to make major blockchains more resilient against the long-discussed threat of quantum computing have accelerated, even as many Bitcoin users remain skeptical about how soon quantum risk becomes practical. This week, two separate threads underscored the direction of travel: experimental defenses for Bitcoin transactions and a new proposal aimed at upgrading Bitcoin’s signature technology.

At the same time, governance decisions and broader market signals continued to shape sentiment across the sector—from Solana’s vote to speed up disinflation to new disclosures and policy debates in the United States. Here are the developments investors and builders should keep on their radar.

Key takeaways

• StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy tested an experimental quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction on mainnet, using a scheme designed to protect outputs during the mempool exposure window.
• Blockstream researchers published a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) to incorporate the SHRINCS post-quantum signature scheme, significantly shrinking a large signature structure while still introducing trade-offs.
• Solana validators approved “Double Disinflation” (SGP-0002), doubling annual disinflation to target 1.5% terminal inflation in about 2.8 years.
• Polygon disclosed multiple security vulnerabilities fixed via recent hard forks, addressing risks that could have affected its proof-of-stake clients.
• US consumer advocacy group Public Citizen claims investors are “underwater” by at least $4.7 billion in connection with Donald Trump-linked crypto ventures since 2022, with losses attributed to specific token products.

Experimental quantum protection reaches Bitcoin mainnet

Earlier coverage focused on how quantum capabilities could threaten cryptographic signatures and public-key systems over time. This week’s milestone came from the practical side: StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy tested an experimental quantum-resistant transaction on Bitcoin mainnet designed to reduce risk during a specific vulnerability period.

According to a Cointelegraph report, Levy’s test used “Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB)” to protect an output in the brief interval when public keys are exposed in the mempool. The approach combines hash-based one-time signatures with computational search techniques that bind an authorization to a specific transaction. In other words, the system is not merely trying to replace signatures wholesale—it is attempting to manage exposure timing relative to how Bitcoin transactions propagate and are validated.

Onchain data referenced in the same report indicates that StarkWare spent a 10,000-satoshi output protected by the QSB scheme. However, the article also highlighted that the mechanism behaves more like a fallback than a broadly usable production-level solution: each transaction reportedly took hours to complete and cost an estimated $150 to $200.

For investors and system designers, the key takeaway is that “quantum-resistance” in Bitcoin is not arriving as a single upgrade button. Instead, it is emerging as layered experiments that tackle specific threat windows first—before longer-term changes to core cryptography can be rolled out through protocol governance.

A BIP aims to upgrade Bitcoin signatures with SHRINCS

Beyond short-term mitigation strategies, the second story points to the longer roadmap: a proposed change to Bitcoin’s signature scheme intended to improve post-quantum security across all transactions.

As described in a Cointelegraph piece, Blockstream researchers published a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal introducing the SHRINCS signature scheme. The researchers reportedly reduced a large hash-based post-quantum signature “by about 13.23 times.” Even with that improvement, the signature size is still described as at least nine times larger than Bitcoin’s existing signatures, and the proposal includes multiple trade-offs.

The same report quotes Blockstream Research’s Jonas Nick, who called it “the first concrete proposal” for a post-quantum signature designed specifically for Bitcoin. Nick acknowledged that it is “not optimal along every axis,” but argued it could represent a reasonable trade-off among available options.

Why this matters for the Bitcoin ecosystem is straightforward: any post-quantum signature upgrade must be weighed against bandwidth, validation costs, implementation complexity, and compatibility with current constraints. A key question for readers is whether future iterations can close the gap between security goals and performance limitations, or whether staged approaches like Levy’s mempool-window protection will remain the practical near-term path for high-value use cases.

Solana accelerates disinflation via validator vote

While Bitcoin-focused news centered on cryptographic evolution, Solana’s latest governance decision shifted attention to monetary policy. Solana validators approved a proposal to double the network’s annual disinflation rate—aimed at reducing issuance faster without changing the broad disinflation direction.

Cointelegraph reported that participation reached 60.7% of eligible stake, with 67% support and 25.16% voting against (7.84% abstained). The measure—known as SGP-0002 or Double Disinflation—increases Solana’s annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%.

Under the new schedule, Solana is expected to reach a 1.5% terminal inflation rate in about 2.8 years, compared with roughly 5.7 years under the previous schedule. The proposal is also projected to reduce issuance by 18.9 million SOL over the next six years, according to the report.

The vote arrives amid signs that network usage is continuing to expand. Cointelegraph cited onchain data presented by The Kobeissi Letter showing Solana processed a record 4.2 billion transactions in July, up 13.5% month over month. Transaction counts reportedly rose by roughly 2 billion since December, representing a 91% increase.

For traders and long-term holders, the immediate relevance is that monetary-policy acceleration can alter expectations around supply growth, even if it does not directly determine short-term price. For builders, higher throughput combined with faster disinflation can influence incentive structures and the economics of running apps, validators, and infrastructure.

Security disclosure: Polygon patches vulnerabilities through hard forks

In another infrastructure-related update, Polygon disclosed previously private security issues that could have disrupted its proof-of-stake network. The vulnerabilities were reportedly fixed through two recent hard forks—Austin and Kyoto—deployed privately first and then activated on mainnet before public disclosure.

Cointelegraph reported that the affected components included Polygon’s Bor and Heimdall clients. The disclosure from Polygon Labs’ Validators Support Team indicated risks such as denial-of-service vectors, validator resource exhaustion, and flaws related to checkpoint and milestone processing.

From an investor and validator perspective, disclosures like this matter because they reveal where reliability and operational risk can concentrate—even if the network continues to run. The most useful next step for market participants is to watch whether validator operations, client updates, and monitoring guidance translate into any follow-up performance or incident reporting after these forks.

US policy and consumer scrutiny: Public Citizen alleges $4.7B in losses

Outside technical upgrades, consumer advocacy continues to influence the regulatory and public narrative around crypto. Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer organization, claims that US President Donald Trump and related digital asset ventures left investors at least an estimated $4.7 billion “underwater” since 2022.

According to a Cointelegraph report, the group’s new filing attributes losses to multiple Trump-linked products: $3.2 billion from the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin; at least $1 billion on the World Liberty Financial governance token; $450 million on Trump Media’s digital asset treasury; and $9.3 million on Trump’s NFT trading cards launched in 2022. The article adds that holders of a USD1 stablecoin were reportedly “sitting pretty on $0 losses.”

The report also notes that Trump’s crypto profits are described as one of the factors supporting the continued progress of the CLARITY Act debate, with Democrats reportedly seeking stronger protections intended to prevent elected officials from profiting through cryptocurrency issuances.

Even for readers who are not focused on US election-era politics, this category of claims tends to affect both compliance pressure on token issuers and the willingness of traditional financial institutions to engage with crypto-linked structures.

Looking ahead, quantum-resistance proposals will likely remain a multi-year, iterative process—starting with narrow defensive experiments and moving toward full signature upgrades through governance. Meanwhile, validator-led disinflation votes and security-related hard fork disclosures offer clearer near-term implications for network economics and reliability; those are the areas to watch closely for follow-on data and operational updates.

Bitcoin embraces post quantum future

Despite considerable skepticism among Bitcoiners about how close the quantum threat to Bitcoin is, two stories this week highlighted the progress being made toward upgrading the blockchain and protecting outputs from attack.

StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy tested an experimental quantum-resistant transaction on the Bitcoin mainnet that protects it during the brief period when public keys are exposed in the mempool.

Onchain data shows that StarkWSare spent a 10,000-satoshi output protected by Levy’s Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) scheme which combines hash-based one-time signatures with computational searches that bind an authorization to a specific transaction. It’s more of a last resort than a practical measure, as each transaction takes hours and costs $150 to $200.

On August 27, Blockstream researchers published a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal to upgrade Bitcoin with the SHRINCS signature scheme. The researchers have slimmed down a huge hash based post quantum signature by about 13.23 times — but it’s still nine times larger than Bitcoin’s existing signatures and comes with a bunch of trade offs.

Blockstream Research’s Jonas Nick called it “the first concrete proposal for a post-quantum signature scheme designed specifically for Bitcoin.” While he said it was “not optimal along every axis” he added:

”I do think it is a very good trade-off among the options we have now,” he said.

Solana validators vote to cut inflation to 1.5% in 2.8 years

Solana validators have approved a proposal to double the network’s annual disinflation rate, reducing issuance by 18.9 million SOL over the next six years.

According to finalized voting results, the proposal received 67% support, with 25.16% voting against and 7.84% abstaining. Overall participation reached 60.7% of eligible stake.

The proposal, known as SGP-0002 or Double Disinflation, increases Solana’s annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%, while leaving the network’s long-term inflation target of 1.5% unchanged.

Under the new schedule, Solana is expected to reach its 1.5% terminal inflation rate in about 2.8 years, compared with roughly 5.7 years under the previous schedule.

Transactions on Solana reached record highs in July. Onchain data presented by The Kobeissi Letter showed that Solana processed a record 4.2 billion transactions during the month, up 13.5% from June. Transaction counts have risen by roughly 2 billion since December, representing a 91% increase.

Trump cost investors $4.7B through crypto ‘schemes’: Public Citizen

Nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen claims that US President Donald Trump “left investors at least an estimated $4.7 billion underwater” since 2022 through his and his family’s digital asset ventures.

It’s new report states that investors lost $3.2 billion via his memecoin Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin, at least $1 billion on the World Liberty Financial governance token, $450 million on Trump Media’s digital asset treasury and $9.3 million on the president’s nonfungible token (NFT) trading cards launched in 2022.

Holders of the USD1 stablecoin however were sitting pretty on $0 losses.

Trump’s crypto profits are one of the key factors holding up passage of the CLARITY Act in September, with Democrats digging in on stronger protections to prevent elected officials from profiting by issuing cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin rally only just getting started

BlocksBridge Consulting reported this week that that Bitcoin’s 23% rally over the past week had outpaced most AI-linked infrastructure stocks.

Three beaten-down Bitcoin mining companies — Canaan, American Bitcoin and Cango — gained between 41% and 67%. By comparison, CoreWeave rose about 21%, Nebius gained 17% and IREN advanced 15%.

The Bitcoin ETFs have minted more than $3.3 billion in August, for the strongest month since October 2025’s all time high. Outflows on Friday ended a nine day hot streak however.

Wall Street analysts from Bernstein predict we are at the start of a new four year cycle. It forecasts Bitcoin will reclaim $125,000 under both its base case and bull case scenario, and will peak at $300,000 in 2029 under the base case but top $500,000 that year under its bullish scenario.

Revolut rolls out euro stablecoin in 3 European markets

Revolut has begun rolling out its first stablecoin, a euro-pegged token called EURR, to around 2 million customers in Denmark, Poland and Portugal. 

The phased rollout will expand to other European Economic Area (EEA) markets later this year, subject to product, operational and regulatory readiness. 

EURR is issued by Bridge Building S.A., the Luxembourg-based entity of Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge. Revolut said EURR will be integrated into its retail app, with plans to support multiple blockchain networks and transfers to external wallets. It’s launching on the Ethereum network.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is up 1.1% to trade at $78,420, Ethereum (ETH) is up 0.6% to trade at $2,469 and XRP (XRP) is down 8.7% to $1.38. The total market cap is at $2.64 trillion according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are VeChain (VET) with an 18.5% gain, SPX6900 (SPX) on 17.3%, and Uniswap (UNI) on 15.2%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Aptos (APT) which was down 16.4%, Stable (STABLE) down 14.7% and Morpho (MORPHO) down 13.6%.

Prediction of the Week

Bitcoin bear market ‘over’ as price metric copies 2023 recovery: CryptoQuant CEO

CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju has flagged the first positive reading on CryptoQuant’s Bull/Bear Market Cycle Indicator since early October.

“The Bitcoin bear cycle is over,” he wrote.

The indicator measures onchain profitability metrics in comparison to a 365 day moving average, including the market value to realized value (MVRV) ratio, net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL) and the spent output profit ratio (SOPR). Values above zero for the Bull/Bear indicator point to bullish phases in the BTC price cycle as profitability improves. 

Current cycle lows came on Feb. 5 as BTC/USD fell to $60,000, with a reading of -1.244 corresponding to “extreme bear” conditions. As of Aug. 26, the most recent date for which full data is available, Bull/Bear displayed a positive reading of 0.042, placing it in its “bull” bracket.

FUD of the Week

77% of Americans see crypto in retirement plans as risky: Survey

More than three-quarters of Americans view cryptocurrency in workplace retirement plans as risky, as concerns over retirement security mount across the United States, according to a new survey from The National Institute on Retirement Security.

The survey found that 77% of Americans consider crypto in workplace retirement plans risky, including 46% who view it as very risky, while 53% oppose employers offering crypto as an investment option.

The survey was conducted by Greenwald Research between Oct. 24 and Nov. 14, 2025, and included 1,203 Americans aged 25 and older, with results weighted by age, gender and income.

Americans view of crypto in retirement plans. Source: National Institute of Retirement Security

Real Trump Coins denies launching GOLD token, blames ‘bad actors’

Real Trump Coins has denied launching, promoting or authorizing the Trump Digital GOLD token that briefly appeared across its online presence before collapsing, blaming the promotion on “third-party bad actors.”

The denial came after the Real Trump Coins X account promoted the Solana-based token on Saturday and directed users to RealTrumpCoins.com, where GOLD was also advertised. The X posts were later deleted, while the account now links to a separate domain, TrumpCoins.com.

“Trump Coins has not authorized and will not launch, promote, or authorize any digital token,” Real Trump Coins said in an X post on Saturday, adding that it was working with authorities to investigate the matter.

Polygon discloses security flaws fixed in recent hard forks

Polygon has disclosed several previously private security vulnerabilities that could have disrupted its proof-of-stake network, after deploying fixes through two recent hard forks.

The vulnerabilities affected Polygon’s Bor and Heimdall clients and included denial-of-service risks, validator resource exhaustion and flaws affecting checkpoint and milestone processing, according to a Thursday disclosure from Polygon Labs’ Validators Support Team. 

Polygon said the flaws were fixed through the Austin and Kyoto hard forks, which were deployed privately and tested before being activated on mainnet and publicly disclosed.

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