Analysis: Bitcoin Developers are Accelerating Their Efforts to Address Quantum Risk

Update (January 24): Per Coinglass data, Bitcoin has failed to break above $90,000 and is currently trading at $89,627. Currently, funding rates across major centralized exchanges (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX) show a slight easing of bearish sentiment toward BTC and SOL, with some platforms returning to neutral rates. However, large-scale bearish sentiment still lingers for altcoins, as evidenced by the funding rates of specific major coins in the attached image. BlockBeats Note: The Funding Rate is a fee set by cryptocurrency exchanges to align contract prices with underlying asset prices, primarily used for perpetual contracts. It’s a funding transfer mechanism between long and short traders—exchanges do not collect this fee themselves. Its purpose is to adjust the cost or profit for traders holding positions, ensuring contract prices stay close to the underlying asset’s value. A Funding Rate of 0.01% serves as the baseline. Rates above 0.01% indicate generally bul

On January 24, Yi Lihua, founder of Liquid Capital (formerly LD Capital), addressed his long ETH strategy in a response to market questions. Regarding the query “ETH below its prior cycle peak while BTC is above its prior cycle peak?” Yi noted the crypto space is currently in a tightening cycle: even as BTC hits a new high, the broader market is underperforming, marking the toughest phase in the past four years. He’s bullish on a new bull run once the easing cycle kicks off, expecting ETH to outperform BTC (a trend seen in historical bull markets where ETH outgained BTC). When asked about “fearing further downside after buying ETH dips around $3,000?” Yi argued the four-year cycle pattern is no longer valid, calling the current moment the best dip-buying opportunity in crypto—especially for ETH. He highlighted huge growth potential in on-chain financial services for stablecoins and U.S. Treasuries, with ETH set to be the biggest beneficiary. On leveraged ETH position safety, Yi s

On January 24th, BitMine Chairman and Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee told CNBC in an interview: “Crypto has always been hit by deleveraging. The ‘1011’ crash was a massive blow to the market—it’s the biggest deleveraging event in crypto history. This week, crypto was holding up well until the ‘Greenland’ statement dropped, sparking volatility in Japanese government bond yields and triggering crypto deleveraging. Unfortunately, I think crypto should’ve tracked gold’s trend to some extent, but we need to strip out the deleveraging effect first—that’s the real reason it’s under pressure right now.” “I still think crypto remains critical as a settlement layer, but that’s more of an Ethereum story tied to smart contracts, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s faced recent headwinds: some folks are worried quantum computing could steal from or hack into roughly a third of its old wallets. But I don’t think Bitcoin’s narrative is dead. It’s just waiting for regulatory clarity, and institutional adoption

On January 24, HyperInsight monitoring indicates that the "ZEC Largest Short" address (0xd475) partially closed out its ETH short position, reducing 1,055.93 ETH shorts worth approximately $3.02 million. After the reduction, the address still holds an ETH short position valued at $118.7 million, with an unrealized profit of around $11.04 million. This address is notable for building a massive ZEC short position: it began shorting ZEC when its price was $184, turning a $21 million loss into a profit.

On January 24, "BTC OG Insider Whale" agent Garrett Jin posted on social media, noting: "Against the backdrop of de-dollarization, extending the debt cycle to help the U.S. address its debt issues seems impractical. Tokenizing U.S. equities to drive stablecoin demand is the primary viable path left for the U.S. to refinance its ballooning debt. BlackRock’s push to bring Real World Assets (RWA) on-chain illustrates this." U.S. debt continues to mount, with proposals to pressure foreign investors to roll over short-term bonds into long-term ones—delaying principal repayments to ease the burden of its roughly $36 trillion federal debt. De-dollarization was initially spurred by the Ukraine War, while developments in Venezuela and Greenland have accelerated this trend. If the U.S. aims to refinance via additional debt issuance, the only realistic path is to expand stablecoin issuance—potentially bypassing foreign regulations to attract new global capital to U.S. Treasuries. To scale th

January 24 — Data from validator tracking site Validator Queue shows the amount of ETH queued to join the Ethereum PoS network has risen steadily since December 26, 2025, now totaling 3,120,542 ETH. That’s an all-time high, valued at roughly $9.24 billion, with an estimated activation delay of about 54 days and 4 hours. This signals strong, sustained staking demand—driven largely by Ethereum treasury firms and institutions like BitMine, which have staked a substantial portion of their ETH holdings. Meanwhile, the Ethereum PoS network’s unstaking queue has been cleared; currently, no meaningful number of users are opting to unstake their ETH, meaning stakers can now withdraw their ETH almost instantly.