Chamath Palihapitiya Says This Old-Fashioned Asset Is Among 'Safe' Trades If The Possibility Of Quantum Computing Cracking Bitcoin Is Even 'Remotely True'

Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya deemed gold as the “only safe trade” Thursday following reports that quantum computers could crack Bitcoin’s BTC/USD encryption faster than anticipated.

What Happened: In an X post, Palihapitiya expressed concern about Bitcoin’s vulnerability to quantum computing and questioned the apex cryptocurrency’s safe haven narrative.

“If this is even remotely true, combined with everything else happening rn, the only safe trade are hard assets and, dare I say, gold,” the tech investor said.

Aravind Srininvas, CEO of Perplexity AI, responded, saying, “Quantum is over hyped right now.”

A few cryptocurrency enthusiasts accused Palihapitiya of spreading FUD. Quinten Francois asked,” Do you have some financial interests in spreading it?”

Why It Matters: Palhipatiya’s concern comes after new research conducted by Google suggested that the RSA encryption could be broken with 20 times fewer quantum resources than previously estimated.

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Notably, the Elliptic Curve Cryptography algorithm, which secures transactions on Bitcoin with public and private keys, is similar in principle to the RSA.

While some experts ruled out immediate dangers to Bitcoin, a few others have advocated for proactive measures to prepare for the threat, such as switching to quantum-resistant algorithms.

Price Action: At the time of writing, BTC was exchanging hands at $106,127.15, down 1.95% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

Interestingly, quantum computing stock Quantum Computing Inc. QUBT has risen over 17% over the past week. During Thursday’s regular session, however, the shares closed down 2.81%.

QUBT demonstrated a very high momentum score—a measure of the stock's relative strength based on its price movement patterns and volatility over multiple timeframes—as of this writing. Check out how other quantum stocks are performing using Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings.