Morning Minute: Mark Cuban Sells His Bitcoin

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors chop while HYPE leads; BTC at $77k
• HYPE hits new ATH over $62 yesterday, ETF flows hit $70M
• Mark Cuban sells his BTC, cites disappointment vs gold & with broader crypto
• New quantum solution proposed by American Fortress, could protect Satoshi coins
• MegaETH shuts down its Terminal program and ends points season early

Mark Cuban Sold Most of His Bitcoin

Mark Cuban sold most of his Bitcoin holdings after concluding it failed to act as a hedge against a weakening dollar and geopolitical turmoil, particularly during the recent Iran conflict.

The billionaire investor, who once described Bitcoin as a superior version of gold and held a crypto portfolio heavily weighted toward it, said the divergence between gold and Bitcoin during the Iran war was the breaking point. Gold surged while Bitcoin struggled to maintain momentum despite a weaker dollar, the exact scenario where the “digital gold” thesis was supposed to deliver.

Cuban commented: “I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold, but gold just blew up and went to $5,000, and Bitcoin dropped. Every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should’ve gone up. It’s not the hedge I expected it to be.”

His disappointment spans across crypto, which he feels still has not found “an application for grandma.” That includes NFTs, which while he refrained from calling them dead, did say they are “disappointing.”

That view is becoming a more common one, as more 5-10 year holders start to capitulate in 2026. And unfortunately, the trend seems more likely to continue than to reverse, at least near term.

A Startup Says It Can Save Satoshi’s 1.1 Million Bitcoin From Quantum Attackers

Researchers at AmericanFortress published a proposal claiming their multi-layer quantum defense system can protect Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 million dormant Bitcoin (and all the others) from future quantum attacks via a soft fork that would freeze and protect exposed addresses.

The problem they’re solving is the “Satoshi problem” that has haunted every quantum defense proposal so far. Bitcoin’s roughly 6.9 million coins in addresses with exposed public keys are directly vulnerable to any quantum computer powerful enough to run Shor’s algorithm against secp256k1 elliptic curve cryptography. BIP-361, authored by Jameson Lopp, proposed freezing those coins if they don’t migrate to quantum, but Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pointed out a fatal flaw: “1.7 million coins can’t do that. It’s not possible. 1.1 million of which belong to Satoshi.” If Satoshi is dead or the keys are lost, there’s no way to migrate voluntarily.

AmericanFortress’s approach is different. Rather than requiring migration or imposing a freeze, their proposal uses a soft fork to create a protected dormancy state, essentially putting a quantum-resistant cryptographic lock around vulnerable addresses without requiring the owner to move the coins or prove control. The system layers multiple post-quantum signature schemes to prevent any quantum attacker from exploiting exposed public keys.

The proposal is in early-stage peer review and has not been submitted as a formal BIP. The parallel PACTs proposal from Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson offers another path, letting holders timestamp cryptographic proofs of ownership today and later unlock coins via quantum-resistant STARK proofs if the network freezes vulnerable addresses.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are flat while HYPE leads again; BTC even at $77k; ETH +1% at $2,130; SOL +2% at $88; HYPE +5% at $61
• NEAR (+32%), FET (+13%), TIA (+13%) and WLD (+13%) led top movers
• Oil -2% at $98.50; Gold even at $4,513
• Stock futures are green with the Nasdaq up slightly as the US and Iran signal some peace progress
• Blockchain.com confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC Thursday for a US IPO expected before year-end, joining SpaceX, Kraken, and Grayscale in the 2026 crypto listing wave; it previously considered going public at a $14B valuation in 2022 before a 2023 Series E round reset that figure significantly lower
• a16z-backed Syndicate Labs announced it is shutting down Thursday after five years building Ethereum rollup developer infrastructure, citing a structural collapse in demand for reusable rollup tooling
• Terraform Labs’ bankruptcy administrator filed an amended complaint Monday alleging Jane Street used a private Telegram group called “Bryce’s Secret” (run by a former Terraform intern who later joined Jane Street) to receive non-public information about the health of TerraUSD before selling its entire $192 million UST position on May 7, 2022, hours before the stablecoin lost its peg

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly green; DOGE +2%, SHIB +2%, PEPE +2%, PENGU +5%, TRUMP +5%, BONK +4%, SPX +4%, FARTCOIN +5%
• Worldcup (+60%), Manifest (+30%) and Clude (+30%) led notable movers on Solana
• Base movers included Supergemma (+33x), grantr (+160%), Pitch (+67%) and Robotmoney (+50%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• MegaETH announced the wind down of its terminal program and conclude its points season early
• Polymarket had a private key exploited for $700k earlier this morning, with the situation developing

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks -1.5% at 33.5 ETH, BAYC -2% at 9.54 ETH, Pudgy -2% at 4.8 ETH; Hypurr’s -7% at 315 HYPE
• Slonkz (+16%) and Milady (+6%) led notable movers