Ivan on Tech discusses Bitcoin's price dip and quantum computing threats to crypto wallets
Ivan on Tech presents a solo live stream analyzing Bitcoin's price action and the emerging debate around quantum computing and AI as potential threats to cryptocurrency security.
Summary
This solo live stream covers two main topics: Bitcoin's current price pullback to around $82,900–$83,000, which he frames as a normal counter-trend move within an ongoing bull trend, and a detailed discussion of warnings from Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake about quantum computing and AI potentially threatening elliptic curve cryptography.
He argues that the practical response for most holders is straightforward — move funds to a fresh address that has never been used for spending — and that the threat is low urgency for small holders due to what he calls the "Satoshi shield." He also notes that Justin Drake's warning extends beyond quantum computing to the possibility that AI could break ECDSA cryptography through conventional mathematical means, which he considers the more surprising and underappreciated element of the warning.
Ivan highlights two additional dimensions of the debate that the Summary previously omitted: First, Vitalik Buterin's view that lattice-based cryptography — often considered the quantum-safe alternative — may itself be vulnerable to AI-driven mathematical advances over the next two years, potentially narrowing the set of truly safe cryptographic schemes to hash-based approaches. Second, Justin Drake's claim that he has personally witnessed the US government censoring academic quantum cryptanalysis results, and his suggestion that the conspicuous absence of cryptographic breakthroughs among AI's recent mathematical outputs may itself be a signal that progress in this area is being suppressed — analogous to scientists going quiet during the Manhattan Project.
Ivan frames the price action as his primary real-time indicator: because Bitcoin remains around $83K and large institutional players are not selling, he is not personally panicking, but he acknowledges he will reassess if Bitcoin drops sharply to $75K–$70K in a single move.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin price action and the current bull trend
Ivan: Bitcoin is dumping right now. We're going down all the way to $82,900. To be fair, we're somewhere where we were yesterday — around $83K, $82,900. The good thing is that Bitcoin is still holding the yellow line. We're still above the May highs right here. The way I see it is that we're just retesting this breakout, and the highest likelihood is that we get a nice, juicy, fantastic bounce in a bull market.
Be bullish. We're in a bull trend. We've been in the first bull trend since November 2025. And whenever you have a trend, you have the impulse wave — when we break out, like we had during the last few weeks, we broke out with a big fat pump breakout. And sometimes within a trend you have counter-trend moves. For example, right here we did see such a move where it went from $81K all the way to $75K. And here, another one where it went from $87K currently all the way to $82K. With highest likelihood, it is a counter-trend move before the next big juicy leg up. But listen, it's a probability. Maybe we go to zero. No one knows what's going to happen in the market. We can only react. If we see the trend is bullish, we're bullish. If we see the trend is bearish, we're bearish. That's the most important way to think about it — we have a trend and we follow it. That's it.
Meanwhile, you have all kinds of altcoins not doing that well. Solana, for example, down a bit, currently at $115, still up 20% since the bull flip. But people are worried, people are concerned about what's going to happen. You have ENA also in a big fat bull trend, up 36% since the bull flip, currently down from almost $0.30 to $0.20. Obviously people are worried. But if you zoom out, if you look at the charts, you see that it is normal, fantastic volatility. And in a bull market, you have a lot of volatility. Sometimes there is more volatility than you can imagine. That's why bull markets without a strategy are not easy. You understand? They're not easy. No one can really go through a bull market and just relax and sit on the beach and drink piña coladas. It's impossible. If you don't have a system, you're going to be shaken out before you can even blink. So it's very important that even when you're bullish, even when the market is bullish, you cannot be complacent. Never be complacent in a bull market.
Quantum computing and AI as threats to crypto security
Now, there is a big topic we have to discuss. It's quantum. Everyone's talking about quantum. Europol warns quantum computing. There is this Justin Drake — one of the Ethereum Foundation researchers — who came out and said that quantum is happening. We're going to be discussing that.
So, Europol came out and said that quantum computing could expose crypto wallet private keys, urging a shift to quantum-resistant security. Isn't it funny? Because we've been speaking about quantum for the longest time. People were ridiculing me. They were saying it's a fad because Adam Back was saying it's not important. We've been saying all the time — quantum, quantum, quantum. Always quantum. Be ready, be prepared. Adam Back and other so-called Satoshis were saying, "No, it's not important." Listen, it is important. I've been telling you that as a computer scientist for years, and now people listen. At least Europol listens. So they're saying it's time to migrate.
What's interesting is that there's a bit of a discussion about why, with all of the AI advancements in math — because many mathematical things have been solved during the last few months, a lot of things that before weren't possible are now possible — people are wondering why it is that out of all of these breakthroughs, nothing is about crypto. Because normally if you have mathematical breakthroughs, crypto will in one way or another be affected. At least something has to be around crypto. But there has been very little. There has been general concern that quantum is coming, but in terms of AI coming for crypto solutions, there hasn't been too much.
And this is an interesting take. A tell from the Manhattan Project was that scientists who had been publishing about nuclear fission suddenly stopped publishing when they did the Manhattan Project. As one observer points out, the lack of cryptographic results in OpenAI's mathematical breakthrough could itself be a tell. Evidence against it would be if they published a few improvements that aren't a massive breakthrough.
Justin Drake's warning and what it means practically
So the big thing was that Justin Drake — and this is a big guy, not a minor guy. He previously worked as one of the key ETH developers. He worked for Vitalik at the Ethereum Foundation. Basically one of the key technical ETH guys, one of the brainiacs behind ETH. He's saying: "Today I call upon the blockchain industry to calmly begin planning for bunker mode. My personal recommendation is to set in motion a controlled mass migration of assets to fresh addresses — i.e., addresses whose public keys remain hidden behind the hash."
So when you create a new address in Bitcoin, for example, in your wallet, and you put your coins there and you never move them, you are more or less safe from the quantum threat. Because your public key is not revealed. Quantum allows a computer to go from a public key to a private key, and a private key can allow you to spend those coins. Currently, with normal computers, it's impossible to go from a public key to a private key. But with quantum, it will be possible.
However, a Bitcoin address is not a public key. It is a hash of a public key. So if you just have your money in an address that has never been used for spending — it's just receiving — you are fully okay. Otherwise, you need to be careful. And this is mainly important for exchanges. It's important for custodians.
If you have 0.2 Bitcoin, listen — they're likely not going to come for you first. Because if someone has this technology, they need to be careful with who they choose to go after. Because as soon as they attack someone, everyone's going to panic and move into unspent addresses. Very important.
So holders, starting with large and sophisticated ones, should consider moving the bulk of their funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction. And when they do sign one, they should also move remaining funds to a new address, possibly generated from the same seed.
Don't rush. This is another important thing. People will rush. You're going to lock yourself out of your private key. Or you may get scammed. This is another important thing. If you receive an email from your Ledger or Trezor saying "urgent migration — you need to urgently migrate, click the button here, enter your seed phrase" — never enter your seed phrase anywhere, guys. Never. Be extremely careful. This is a fantastic opportunity for scammers. You're going to receive a million emails urging you to migrate your coins, and you have to be super careful. In no circumstance should you enter your seed phrase or private key anywhere. No one serious will ask for that. Don't rush. Never rush.
Because likely, if the US or China has a quantum computer, they're not coming for you. Sorry to say, they're not going to come for you. They're likely going to come for the big exchanges first.
The Satoshi Shield explained
And then there is the so-called Satoshi shield. The Satoshi shield is basically all of the thousands of addresses that belong to Satoshi himself, where he has 50 BTC, and all of these addresses are OG addresses — old addresses that have their public key revealed. In the early days of Bitcoin, the public key was always revealed. So all of the old addresses, such as Satoshi's addresses, are vulnerable by default, even if they never spent, even if they were never used for spending.
A few years after the launch of Bitcoin, the developers migrated so that each address is not a public key but a hash of it, making it more secure. So the Satoshi shield is the fact that Satoshi created thousands of addresses holding 50 Bitcoin each from the early days when he mined Bitcoin. This means that if you have less than 50 BTC in your address, you're unlikely to be targeted first, because there are so many Satoshi addresses. So that's what the Satoshi shield is, in case you hear about it.
Don't panic. Moving assets to protected addresses is a simple preventative step which does not require new cryptography or new wallets. In Justin Drake's opinion, it's not unreasonable to expect a breakthrough for the possibility that elliptic curve cryptography — ECDSA — breaks before Q-day, in the worst case in months, not years. Is it a fad? Is it not? Listen, I don't know. I'm not a quantum researcher. Who the hell knows? No one knows. But what is the risk? What is the cost — the effort to move coins to an address that has never been used? It literally takes three minutes. What is the upside? The upside is that you are protected.
And again, for you, if you have less than 50 BTC — most people don't have 50 BTC — you are at low risk anyway. But at some point you should move anyway. The effort for most people is quite low. For exchanges, it could be big. But most of them, I think, are already set up in a way where they don't reuse addresses — although who knows. For exchanges, this is a massive process to move their wallet infrastructure to a new way of operation.
AI as a potential threat to cryptography — beyond quantum
Recent days have been humbling for human mathematical intuition. Long-held, unquestioned hypotheses have fallen. Yesterday's OpenAI drop made it clear that mathematical superintelligence is upon us. They say there are weeks where decades happen. We are about to live through weeks where centuries of mathematical progress happen.
Could our magic 64-byte ECDSA signatures be too good to be true? Was it just security through obscurity all this time? And by the way, isn't it interesting — he's not even speaking about quantum here. Because he said something at the top: this is going to happen before Q-day. Q-day is when quantum goes nuts. But actually, when you read this, he speaks about all of this with normal math advances. Not that you need some kind of quantum for it. Just AI basically coming after cryptography without quantum. That's very interesting.
So practically what this means is: security through obscurity means that you don't actually have bulletproof security. You just have a smart scheme that people just haven't figured out. And cryptography normally has been counted as real security — like it's mathematically and physically impossible to break. But if AI can break it, then even cryptography becomes security through obscurity. It's just that we haven't figured out the puzzle of how to break it.
Also noteworthy is the striking underrepresentation of cryptographic breakthroughs among the 700 main mathematical results OpenAI published. Justin Drake says he has witnessed firsthand the US government censoring academic quantum cryptanalysis results. Back-room intervention is his base case. He's basically saying: listen, maybe it's already broken, or very close to it.
His advice: make your coins quantum-safe, and then you're also safe from this potential AI breakthrough. Because his understanding is that these developments don't address the hash. So if your assets are in a hashed address, they're protected against both quantum and against AI figuring out a way to break cryptography going from public key to private key. That's probably the whole connection — moving to a new address is the solution for both quantum and this.
Bitcoin maxis dismiss the warning — Ivan's response
And then Bitcoin maxis instantly ran with "irresponsible FUD." I mean, what do you mean? Europol said the same thing. What is the effort to move coins? It's not hard to move coins to a new address that has never been used. For exchanges, it's hard, yeah. But they will have their own tech roadmap for how to do it. And if you write a tweet, it's not like CZ is just going to vibe-code a new wallet and mess it up. So why call it irresponsible FUD? For the average person, it's easy to move. Effort is small, upside is big in terms of protection. And it's not like exchanges are going to recode their whole infrastructure because they read a tweet and got emotional. So how is it irresponsible? I don't think it is.
What Vitalik Buterin says
Let's see what Vitalik says. So far, most people have been in the mode of thinking: elliptic curves broken, hash is safe, lattice-based cryptography is safe. But there is a good chance that the concrete security of lattice-based schemes will take serious hits from the next two years of AI-driven mathematical advances. The basic threat is factoring — something that naively takes a very long time to do from first principles. But over decades, smart people have found and optimized algorithms — number field sieves and so on. That's where my math cuts off, actually. Fields and groups — we had discrete math, and then we had groups and fields, and that's where I went full-time crypto. For trading, I didn't even need most of the math.
So if you are a brainiac, you can read Vitalik's full explanation about fields and groups and all of the mathematical detail. But for everyone else: you don't have to understand it. What you have to understand is: currently, price is not dumping. Meaning big players are not dumping. Meaning big players are not taking it seriously. And big players here means all the Wall Streets, all the BlackRocks. We need to be humble and say they're probably smarter than us — or at least they have thousands of people putting a lot of time into this while we put a little time. So these people are not worried. Price is at $83K. That's why I'm personally not panicking, even though it is interesting how fast science and math is developing.
Price check — altcoins holding up
Let's check the coins that are holding up. Because now with all of this quantum and hacking discussion, you see that Bitcoin does not really move. We're at $83K. So the market does not really care about it. When the market is not worrying, likely it's okay. Should Bitcoin suddenly drop to $75K in one day, then okay, something's happening. Some big dude — maybe a nation-state kind of big dude — is moving some coins. If Bitcoin goes from $83K to $75K or $70K, okay, something's going on. Someone is dumping very hard. Then we need to take the news seriously. Currently, because prices are not really moving, the big players are not taking it seriously. No need to be super anxious, but good to keep in mind. Potentially move to a new address that you haven't spent from. Good to keep in mind.
NEAR is holding up quite nicely. NEAR is actually quantum-proof, so it has a green week — doing very well in comparison to everything else. Not many things have a green week this week. And then Radium, which is in our model portfolio — up 12% even now. Basically the only thing carrying most portfolios in the last 48 hours or so. We added it to the model portfolio about two weeks ago. Very, very good.
Q&A — viewer questions
On Tap Root addresses: Practically what it means is nothing for most people. The simplest thing: it doesn't apply to a new, unspent address. Don't over-complicate it.
On buying the dip: Because the trend is bullish, everything is bullish. This is indeed, in my view, a nice buying opportunity. It's a nice opportunity to DCA. Basically, do whatever strategy you have in this bull market — whether you follow mechanical rules or whatever you do. When you have a dip like this in a bull trend, DCA. Fantastic.
On altcoins holding up: Most people don't have a calm view on the market. The average crypto investor is panicking. Why? Because Solana went from $122 to $115. But what are the current conditions? The current condition is that Bitcoin went from $87K to $83K. It's bullish because it was in the low $70s a week or two ago. It's interesting how our brain works emotionally. People say, "Oh no, given the current conditions, it's crazy that alts are holding up." But we had these exact same conditions a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago — we were at $75K.
On Uniswap (UNI): UNI is in a bull trend. Up 88% since the bull flip. Don't over-complicate it. There's a bit of a pullback. If it closes below $7.20, I would personally shift to another DeFi play. There are many DeFi options. If this goes bear trend, you just know it's a bull market, so probably it won't be a big bear trend, but still — why waste maybe two months going bear and then recovering? Just shift over to something that isn't in a bear trend. That's why I prefer to do it.
On Worldcoin: The chart is choppy. I wouldn't touch it until it gets above the current resistance and really confirms that it wants to pump. Long-term, I like the proposition — not the dystopian part of it. There's obviously a dystopian part, like scanning the eyeball. But this idea that in the world of AI, it's nice to prove that you're a human — you can either prove that by showing your passport, which can be faked, or by biometrics. Because very soon there's going to be big demand for human-verified social media. Now if you open Instagram, most of it is AI. And AI is pretty fun — it does very engaging videos that are interesting to watch, but it's brain rot at the end of the day. It's going to develop and become better and better. Soon enough you cannot really distinguish whether something is a person or not a person. In that environment, it's going to be very important to be able to show: hey, I'm a real human. There's going to be a big niche for human-only content. So in that scenario, is it nice that you can prove your humanness in some way? Yes. Is Worldcoin the best solution? Who the hell knows? But it is the most known and most talked-about one.
On Zama: Very strong chart. New chart. Some privacy stuff — confidential on-chain finance. Chart looks very good. The buyers have stepped in and supported prices. If it's on Binance, I guess it's not a rug. Looks okay.
On Seeker Phone: The Seeker stuff was relevant in around May 2025. The phone thing is not really in the news. The chart had a god candle and has been consolidating since. From a risk-reward perspective, if it can get supported at this level, that would be a confirmation of the breakout. But with a single god candle, you need to be careful — it can just consolidate for a while. If it's an illiquid market, then TA and trends don't work the same way. All in all, it looks okay. The buyers have stepped in. Hopefully we just get support here and bounce to the upside. But in terms of infrastructure, I don't see too much in the news. Just follow the price. It's a bull trend, so so far so good.
On going lower: Listen, if we start breaking down, I will adapt accordingly. I just know that with highest probability we're going to go higher. That doesn't mean it's guaranteed — we could go lower. There's no certainty. We're just here, humble players riding the probability.