Bitcoin Axed By Top Wall Street Strategist Over Quantum Computing Fears - Is Crypto’s Foundation Cracking?

Wall Street's elite are sharpening their knives—and this time, Bitcoin's in the crosshairs. A leading strategist just issued a brutal takedown, citing a threat that sounds ripped from sci-fi: quantum computing.

The Quantum Countdown

Forget interest rates and ETF flows. The new existential fear isn't regulatory—it's computational. The argument goes like this: future quantum machines could crack the cryptographic algorithms that secure Bitcoin's blockchain, potentially unraveling the entire network's security model in one fell swoop. It's a doomsday scenario that turns digital gold into digital dust.

Security vs. Speculation

The critique strikes at crypto's core paradox. Proponents champion its decentralized, math-based security as superior to traditional finance. Skeptics see a house of cards, vulnerable to technological leaps they never anticipated. This Wall Street warning amplifies that second narrative, framing Bitcoin not as a hedge against the old system, but as prey for the next one.

Innovation's Double-Edged Sword

Here's the twist: the crypto space isn't standing still. Post-quantum cryptography research is already underway across major blockchain projects. The very community accused of ignoring the threat might be racing to build the solution—a classic case of disruptive innovation trying to outrun the disruption it spawned.

The finance world loves a good apocalyptic prophecy—it's great for fees and headlines. Whether this quantum warning is prescient risk management or just another tool to talk down an asset class that bypasses traditional gatekeepers, it forces a critical question. Is Bitcoin building an immutable future, or just a very expensive test subject for the next computing revolution?

Veteran Strategist Chris Wood Exits Bitcoin

Wood wrote that he is not positioning for an imminent price shock, but that the long-duration mandate is where the quantum question bites. “While GREED & fear does not believe that the quantum issue is about to hit the bitcoin price dramatically in the near term, the store of value concept is clearly on less solid foundation from the standpoint of a long-term pension portfolio,” Wood wrote. “For that reason, GREED & fear will remove the 10% allocation to Bitcoin this week with 5% reallocated to gold and 5% reallocated to gold-mining stocks.”

The move is framed as risk management rather than a retrospective performance critique. Wood noted that despite gold’s recent outperformance versus Bitcoin, Bitcoin remained well ahead since his model first added it: Bitcoin had risen 325% since December 17, 2020, while gold bullion was up 145% over the same period.

In a note dated January 15, 2026, Wood described how the quantum discussion has moved from abstract theory into something asset allocators are being asked to underwrite. “GREED & fear is no pure mathematician,” he wrote, adding that he has found himself pulled into conversations about “elliptic curves” because of “the growing focus in recent months on the threat posed to the Bitcoin system by the arrival of quantum computing.”

His Core claim is that the perceived timeline is compressing. He referenced rising concern that cryptographically relevant quantum computers could arrive “a few years away rather than a decade or more,” and argued that any credible threat to Bitcoin’s security model is “potentially existential” because it undermines the store-of-value concept that underpins the “digital alternative to gold” narrative.

Wood’s mechanism is straightforward: what is computationally infeasible today could become tractable under CRQCs. He wrote that the current asymmetry, easy to derive a public key from a private key, effectively impossible to reverse, could collapse, with the time to derive a private key from a public key shrinking to “mere hours or days.”

Wood said the industry is already debating potential responses, including whether to “burn” quantum-vulnerable coins to protect system integrity or to do nothing and accept the possibility that vulnerable coins could be stolen by entities with CRQCs. He presented the dispute as a conflict between preserving Bitcoin’s property-rights ethos and avoiding a policy choice that looks confiscatory, adding that one computer scientist he spoke with described the do-nothing stance as a “suicidal delusion.”

Wood said his thinking was informed by discussions with knowledgeable parties and pointed to a Chaincode report as background reading, without treating it as a near-term trading trigger.

VanEck’s Sigel Responds

Sigel’s takeaway was less about whether quantum risk exists and more about how different systems respond. When one user argued that quantum WOULD wipe out bank accounts, email, and brokerage systems as well, Sigel dismissed that as “not a sufficient take anymore,” drawing a sharp distinction between upgrade paths and reversibility.

“Banks upgrade top-down; BTC requires years of consensus,” Sigel wrote. “Banks have an ‘undo’ button; BTC is finality-first.”

Sigel also linked the debate to a familiar fault line inside Bitcoin governance. Asked how representative Wood’s view might be, Sigel said that in the “Adam Back vs. Nic Carter” debate he is “on Nic’s side,” and described Wood’s decision as supporting evidence. At the same time, Sigel emphasized process: he met Wood in New York before the note was published and said that although he disagreed with the conclusion, Wood “came to it honestly.”

On positioning, Sigel said he has “added quantum exposure” previously to VanEck’s Onchain Economy ETF (NODE) and made small hedges, with a preference for “diversified” AI miners over “DATs / Leveraged BTC,” while keeping spot BTC via an ETF as the largest holding. He framed the quantum issue as “solvable” and akin to a “wall of worry like blocksize wars,” rather than a thesis-breaker.

At press time, BTC traded at $90,941.