Bitcoin slipped toward $63,000 while AT&T put commercial quantum processors into its network, and the contrast pushed "Q-Day" back into market conversation. The drop triggered $100 million in forced liquidations, though external pressures — South Korea's KOSPI index, semiconductors and the coming Federal Reserve meeting — drove the decline.
Bitcoin has fallen toward the $63,000 mark while telecommunications giant AT&T deploys next-generation commercial quantum processors. That contrast has prompted the market to discuss a shorter timeline to "Q-Day" — the moment when legacy encryption could be critically compromised.
AT&T and D-Wave cut an hour-long task to 15 seconds
An expanded contract between AT&T and D-Wave Quantum Inc. put quantum annealing technology into the operator's network optimization algorithms. As a result, a complex network task that previously took one hour now finishes in just 15 seconds. Against that backdrop, QBTS shares rose above $18.10 in premarket trading.
Bitcoin's slide wipes out $100 million in positions
Bitcoin's move toward $63,000 triggered $100 million in forced liquidations of traders' positions. But external factors have driven the current decline: a drop in South Korea's KOSPI index, a sell-off in the semiconductor sector, and expectations surrounding the upcoming U.S. Federal Reserve meeting.
Experts call crypto the first target
However, the downturn has also brought security risks back into focus. Experts such as Quantum Xchange CEO Eddy Zervigon have directly described cryptocurrencies as a "canary in the coal mine" in the face of the quantum threat. They predict that blockchain protocols could become the first targets because of their decentralized nature.
Meanwhile, the "Q-Day" clock is ticking faster. Google researchers have cut their estimate of the computing power required to break Bitcoin by 20 times, and now believe fewer than 500,000 physical qubits would be needed. The U.S. Department of Energy expects a powerful quantum computer to be built within the next three years, while corporations including IBM and Microsoft are preparing the market for cryptographically relevant systems by 2029.
AT&T's success has demonstrated that the quantum era is already a real business process. Bitcoin's main challenge now lies elsewhere: whether its community can agree on an encryption upgrade before it is too late.
Source: U.Today
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