[ExI] You'd better sell your bitcoins

[Adrian Tymes]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 9:48 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2025 at 9:07 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> > Even if all of this is true, wait until that computer actually comes out.  This isn't Roko's Basilisk; this computer can't affect things before it exists.
>
> Actually it can. There will come a time when quantum computers have made a lot of progress very rapidly but they're still not big enough to run Shor’s algorithm; however, an increasingly large number of people realize that they soon will be, and then there's going to be a wave of panic selling.

You grossly overestimate the technical literacy of the general public
- even of the portion of the public that has significant investment in
Bitcoin.

"This might someday happen" is leagues apart from "the computer is
there now, and here's a demo of how it can break Bitcoin's security,
so now we're just waiting for someone to actually do it in a
significant way".

> but your timing would need to be perfect. You'd be playing Russian roulette with your money.

All investment can be said to be a form of gambling.  The difference
between the two terms is a matter of degree.  That said, the degree
right now is strongly in the direction of "investment", and will not
rise to "gamble" on this particular issue until the computer actually
exists.

Since we're talking panic selling from something that would
fundamentally break Bitcoin's perceived value, I'd say that would
equate to an event that collapses the price by 50% or more in a short
time frame.  (Really, probably 90% or more, but for this prediction
I'll be a bit conservative on that.)

Although Bitcoin has been on a generally downward trend recently,
having fallen over 10% over the past month (as it historically often
has after reaching all-time peaks, which I believe it did on October
7), I predict that the price of Bitcoin, as measured in US dollars -
for sake of this prediction let's use the top result from
https://www.google.com/search?q=price+of+bitcoin - will not fall by a
further 50% or more this week.  As of this writing it's about $95,000,
so it will fulfill this prediction if it is above $47,500 next Monday
- November 24, 2025 - at about 10 AM US Eastern Standard Time.