Google's quantum Willow: is crypto at risk

😨 Google’s quantum Willow: is crypto at risk?

Plus: Spotify gets roasted by Worldcoin

GM. Welcome to the Daily Squeeze – the place where crypto cherries, blockchain bananas, and market mangoes all get juiced into one refreshing blend.

🤖 Google introduces Willow – a quantum computing chip.

🍋 News drops: Bitmain is expanding its production line in the US, Floki and Mastercard drop a new debit card + more

🍍 Market flavor today

A hush sits over the crypto village – everyone seems to be quietly waiting for something big to happen 📖 And then, what do we see? BTC drops to $95K, yet the vibe is anything but fearful – the Fear and Greed Index is at 78.

Bitfinex analysts noticed that the correction lighted some fireworks in the derivatives neighborhood – over $1.1B in liquidations, $419M of which were Bitcoin longs.

But don’t worry – things also seem to be cooling off. Realized profits, once at $10.5B daily, have settled down to $2.5B = less selling = less pressure pushing the price down.

Another green flag: futures funding rates (how expensive it is to hold a futures contract compared to spot BTC) have normalized. High funding rates mean lots of speculation and sometimes unstable prices, so this calmer mood is a good look.

Plus, BTC ETFs keep doing their thing with $478.1M in inflows yesterday, giving the market some solid support.

Basically, the general outlook for the coming weeks and months seems pretty bullish. If the cost of holding futures doesn’t get too high again, and fewer people cash out profits, then Bitcoin could keep climbing.

Daniel Cheung from Syncracy Capital has this take: this cycle, traders are all about trying to sell at the top instead of hodling. But ironically, this short-term mindset might stretch the uptrend longer.

Some say the best stories don’t have clear endings – they keep you guessing. Crypto’s no different: every page flips with a new plot twist. What will the next chapter bring us? TBD ✨

🥝 Memecoin harvest

It’s a meme-eat-meme world out there, and these ones surely aren’t hungry today:

Luigi Mangione (LUIGI) +31K%

Inspired by the dude who shot the CEO of a health insurance company, Brian Thompson. Very dark, but apparently… memeable? 😬

Google New Super AI (WILLOW) +2K%

This one’s riding the hype wave from Google’s new quantum chip, Willow.

Increased thanks to Binance Futures announcing the KOMAUSDT Perpetual Contract.

Pepecoin Network (PEP) +52%

A Dogecoin fork building a “fun” Layer-1 blockchain community.

Data as of 08:15 AM EST.

🤖 Quantum is the new black

There are certain words you can toss into daily conversations to sound smarter – or a bit of a show-off, but at least an intelligent one. Like saying juxtaposition instead of contrast. And if you’re feelin a lil’ cray, you can go for the ultimate flex word: quantum.

The best part is, you can drop the quantum bombshell in the most random contexts, and people will nod, ’cause 90% of the population has no idea what that means.

Example. You: I’m feeling quantum today. Everyone: 😧 Give this person a monocle and a Nobel Prize ASAP.

Turns out, Google knows this life hack, too (except, they prolly do know what that is). They’ve introduced Willow – a new quantum computing chip that processes computational problems so fast it makes supercomputers look like they’re sloths crossing the road.

How fast, you ask? Willow can solve a problem in under five minutes that’d take the best supercomputer, uh, 10 septillion years.

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

That much. No, I didn’t add extra zeros for drama (bolding does that part). Yes, that’s longer than the age of the universe (which is 13.8B years, btw).

How does that work? Here’s a TL;DR:

Classical computers = regular bits (1s and 0s, or beep and boop for my non-tech readers).
Quantum computers = qubits (1s, 0s, and also both at once. Beep, boop… and beepboop).

But the problem with quantum computers has always been this: the more qubits you add, the messier things get. They’re super sensitive to environmental interference, so stuff like temperature changes or tiny vibrations can cause errors.

Willow’s big brain moment to fix this? It combines the information from 100+ qubits into one “logical” qubit. This approach reduces errors and keeps the whole system running efficiently.

And Google thinks this breakthrough could lead to commercially viable quantum computers by the end of the decade. Cool 😃👍 …but what’s the point of quantum computers anyway?

These computers are designed for specific types of problems that classical computers struggle with, like breaking encryption, simulating quantum systems (think chemistry), optimizing complex systems (think logistics), and solving big problems in machine learning and AI.

Now, here’s where the crypto community might start sweating: if quantum computers could crack encryption, does that mean our industry is done?

Short answer: no. Not yet, at least.

To crack Bitcoin’s encryption in 24 hours, you’d need a quantum computer with 13 million qubits. Willow’s rocking a cutesy lil’ 105 qubits, so we’re still millions of qubits away from serious threats.

Basically, that’s a future-us problem. But for now, let’s just appreciate the fact that stuff that would’ve gotten us burned as witches in the Middle Ages is now becoming a reality. Wild times, my friends.

🍋 News drops

🇺🇸 Binance CEO Richard Teng isn’t ready to talk about a US comeback just yet. “Whether we re-enter the US market, I think that’s a premature discussion,” he said.

⛏ BTC miner Bitmain is expanding its production line in the US to dodge escalating trade drama between China and America. Bitmain’s known for designing ASIC chips for crypto mining.

🌎 World (formerly Worldcoin) went on X to roast Spotify Wrapped. More specifically, the platform’s questionable data privacy practices:

💳 Floki teamed up with Mastercard to drop a new debit card, available in both physical and virtual versions across 31 European countries. This bad boy supports 8+ blockchains and lets you load up with FLOKI and other cryptos.

🪂 The Movement Network Foundation launched MOVE – the utility token for its Ethereum L2 network, Movement. 1B MOVE tokens were handed out in the MoveDrop airdrop for early users.