Morning Minute is a daily newsletter authored by Tyler Warner. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent those of Decrypt. Be sure to check out our daily news show 'FOMO HOUR' for the latest top stories and market insights.
Good morning!
Here are today’s key updates:
- Major cryptocurrencies drop by 1-3% ahead of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report; Bitcoin stands at $77,000.
- Bitcoin ETFs experience $280 million in outflows and $440 million this week.
- Binance's Bitcoin reserves reach a two-year high.
- The Stonkfun ecosystem rises as the Stonk token hits $0.30, with several pairs increasing by 2-4x.
- Robinhood Chain leaders are recovering as trading volumes stabilize, with Flycoin debuting at $50 million.
🤖 AI Agents Slash the Cost of Breaking Bitcoin’s Cryptography by 86% in Just Two Months
A team of over 100 researchers collaborating with AI coding agents has made significant progress in reducing the benchmark for a critical aspect of quantum attacks on Bitcoin and Ethereum, dropping it from 10.75 billion to 1.496 billion. This advancement occurred between late May and July 26, with the findings published just this week.
To provide context, Bitcoin and Ethereum utilize secp256k1, an elliptic curve for securing signatures. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could potentially reverse-engineer this mathematical process to derive a private key from a public key, posing a significant threat. The competition known as ECDSA.Fail, organized by Eigen Labs, evaluated circuit designs by measuring logical qubits against Toffoli gates, a costly quantum operation. A lower score indicates reduced resource requirements. The top design utilized 1,151 logical qubits and approximately 1.3 million Toffoli gates, with later submissions managing to reduce the gate count to under a million. This leading score was about half of the benchmark set by Google Quantum AI in March, although the two used different evaluation methods, making direct comparisons difficult.
The research paper was authored by contributors from Eigen Labs, Trail of Bits, StarkWare, Theta Labs, MultiVM Labs, and the Ethereum Foundation. This group represents a significant portion of the crypto security community, funding and disseminating research that lowers attack costs, based on the premise that understanding the real costs will aid in planning defenses. They refer to their methodology as Open Autoresearch, where humans and AI agents work collaboratively towards a shared measurable goal, with a verifier involved in the process.
This development comes amid a growing urgency in the quantum landscape. The Ethereum Foundation has established a firm deadline of December 2029 to ensure that transactions, validators, and storage are quantum-resistant. StarkWare has already executed the first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction on the mainnet, while Ethereum developers are considering a revamp of the validator deposit contract. Ripple is enhancing the security of the XRP Ledger, and Galaxy has committed up to $5 million in funding, with nine firms, including BlackRock and Coinbase, pledging a total of $15 million over three years. The researchers also reference a draft from NIST suggesting the phasing out of classical public-key algorithms at the 112-bit level after 2030 and banning them entirely after 2035.
So, where do we stand? The defense side is on a set timeline, measured in years, while the attack side has seen an 86% reduction in costs over just two months due to the efforts of a hundred researchers utilizing AI agents. This isn’t a prediction regarding the so-called Q-Day, and no funds are currently at risk. However, it challenges the assumption that research on attack strategies progresses at a human pace, revealing the potential for rapid advancements in this area.
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets
- Major cryptocurrencies are down 1-4%; BTC -1% at $77k; ETH stable at $2,455; SOL -2% at $100; HYPE -4% at $79; ZEC -10% at $1,095.
- Leading altcoins include RAY (+13%), PONS (+11%), and FF (+5%).
- Oil prices are up 2% at $99; Gold is down 1% at $4,385.
- Stock futures are showing positive movement after a drop in oil prices; DOW +0.6%, Nasdaq +0.6%.
- Senate Republicans have introduced a revised 630-page Clarity Act ahead of a procedural vote on September 15, which includes CFTC registration for “decentralized-in-name-only” protocols while largely maintaining existing ethics provisions.
- Sam Bankman-Fried has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn his fraud conviction, contending that he was unable to demonstrate that customers suffered no losses and labeling the $11 billion forfeiture as excessive.
- Brian Armstrong stated on CNBC that a $400,000 Bitcoin price by 2030 is still a reasonable target, claiming the prolonged downtrend has reached its lowest point and anticipating SEC and CFTC guidance in the coming weeks.
- Binance's Bitcoin reserves have surpassed 693,000 BTC, reaching a two-year high and representing approximately 30% of reserves held by major exchanges, following the addition of about 77,000 BTC since late April.
- Singapore's Alpha Ladder has started distributing Payward's xStocks to institutional and accredited investors in select APAC markets via its WealthX platform, as per an MOU with Payward and MetaComp.
- Ethereum developers have tentatively scheduled the launch of Glamsterdam for Sepolia on October 6, although the upgrade has not yet demonstrated stability on any private development network, and no dates for Hoodi or the mainnet have been established.
Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
- Bitcoin ETFs recorded $283 million in net outflows on Thursday, while ETH ETFs saw $30 million in outflows.
Meme Coin Tracker
- Meme leaders are mostly down; DOGE -2%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -3%, TRUMP -2%, SPX -2%.
- Robinhood chain leaders have rebounded today; Pons up 10% to $420 million; AI up 25% at $250 million; Cashcat stable at $160 million; Flybrain surged by 830%, Zforge 100x, Juggernaut 600%, and Frong 100% led the top movers.
- On BSC, Niu Lau rose 70% to $130 million following its Binance spot listing; BREW up 100% and Marscoin up 20% were other notable movers.
- Top movers on Solana included Ember up 165% and Fone up 40%; Ansem fell 7% to $150 million.
- The Stonkfun ecosystem saw significant gains last night with STONK surpassing $0.30; Stonk up 55% at $270 million, ZCAT down 7% at $83 million, KNOTS up 100% at $44 million, BTC up 94% at $18 million, and PURR up 43% at $13 million; LOOP 100x, METH 7x, LMEOW 180%, Stonkcat 7x, and JUPCAT 6x were among the leading movers.
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
- Hyperliquid led on-chain protocols with $2.08 million in revenue today; PUMP ranked 7th with $1.4 million, PONS next with $1.14 million, and Stonk ranked 13th with $760,000.
- On-chain RWA perpetual volume exceeded $120 billion in August, a substantial increase from under $1 billion in October 2025, with open interest nearing $4.9 billion.
- Raydium’s RAY token has surged 86% this week due to its association with the expanding Stonkfun ecosystem.
🚚 NFT Market Updates
- NFT leaders showed little movement; Punks stable at 30 ETH, BAYC down 1% at 6.7 ETH, Pudgy down 3% at 3.6 ETH.
- Argonauts (+40%) and The 404 Machines (+20%) led the top movers.