Single Galaxy customer sells $9 billion in Bitcoin sparks quantum debate again
Last year, a Galaxy Digital (GLXY) customer sold $9 billion worth of Bitcoin, and quantum computing may have been the reason.
CEO Mike Novogratz said during the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call that the sale helped weigh on the cryptocurrency market because the position took some time to unwind. It came from an investor in the Satoshi era as an estate planning move.
“It’s like a distribution IPO, the price usually goes down, and then the distribution ends and the price goes back up,” Novogratz said after revealing that a client sold $9 billion worth of Bitcoin. “I think that’s part of the cycle we’re in now. As I said before, I don’t know when the sellers are going to run out of steam. There’s not that much leverage in the system anymore.”
Novogratz suggested that the decision to sell Bitcoin was part of a broader wave of profit-taking among early Bitcoin adopters that the company was seeing. While the community has long supported “holding” through volatility, this belief appears to be waning.
“There are a large number of religious believers who hold this notion of holding Bitcoin,” he said. “Somehow, the rush went away and you started to see some selling.”
While the sale is not new, having been reported last year, it was seen as symbolic, sparking debate among Bitcoin OG holders about a loss of confidence. What is attracting everyone’s attention now is that the reason may be the risk that quantum computing brings to Bitcoin.
“Big excuse”
Novogratz called the quantum threat the “big excuse” for the sale. He said the cryptocurrency industry expects quantum technology to pose a threat.
He’s not wrong, and the debate has been heating up lately. Investors and industry observers are now weighing the real threat of quantum cracking of Bitcoin’s encryption.
While some say quantum computing technology is still a long way from becoming a reality, some developers believe that as we get closer to the quantum threat, the Bitcoin network will need to be upgraded to be quantum-resistant. However, Novogratz said the risk is that “developers will all become stubborn and fight each other,” although he noted that this is unlikely to happen.
“I just don’t think that’s going to happen. Quantum is not going to be a big issue for cryptocurrencies in the long term,” he said. “It’s going to be a big problem for the world, but cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, will be able to handle it.”
Still, Novogratz said a break from the idea that people should hold Bitcoin forever may stem from something deeper than the market’s current bearish trend.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has emphasized in the past that Cardano is actively pushing for quantum-resistant upgrades, while early Bitcoin developer Adam Back pointed to ongoing research and development Bitcoin’s secure encryption scheme.
For Samson Mow, CEO of Bitcoin technology company JAN3, quantum is first and foremost a threat to banking. Nonetheless, the Ethereum Foundation just this month officially elevated post-quantum security to a strategic priority and established a dedicated post-quantum team.
Quantum threat
Perhaps one of the bigger stories about sensational threats is Coinbase’s admission that quantum computing could pose a real long-term threat to the cryptocurrency market, as Shor’s algorithm could break the signatures that protect the private keys of Bitcoin addresses.
Essentially, this would allow bad actors to leverage quantum computers to access funds in any wallet for which the public key (often compared to an International Bank Account Number (IBAN) in cryptocurrencies) has been exposed on the blockchain.
Modern Bitcoin addresses hash their public keys, hiding them until the funds are spent on the blockchain. This means that approximately one-third of the Bitcoin supply is expected to be threatened by quantum computers.
Another threat is Grover’s algorithm, which could overwhelm the computing power protecting the network, thereby undermining Bitcoin’s economic and security model.
However, the threat is not imminent. Current quantum computers have not yet reached 1,000 qubits (a unit used to measure the power of quantum computers), and it is estimated that millions of qubits would be needed to break Bitcoin’s cryptography.
However, this threat is having real-world consequences for Bitcoin.
Christopher Wood, Jefferies’ head of global equity strategy, last month removed 10% of his Bitcoin allocation from his model portfolio due to the threat posed by quantum computing.
