Morning Minute: Jim Cramer Sells His Bitcoin Over Quantum Fears

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.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors slightly green while stocks hit new ATHs; BTC +0.5% at $64.1k
• BTC ETF inflows reach $380M in first 2 sessions this week
• Justin Drake and others propose EIP-8361 to curb ETH inflation
• Cloudflare launched Cloudflare Wallets geared towards AI agent payments
• CASHCAT soars 40% to $96M leading broad Robinhood Chain rebound

🔮 Jim Cramer Is Selling His Bitcoin Over the Quantum Threat

CNBC host Jim Cramer said he’s selling his Bitcoin, this time over fears of quantum computing.

The decision came on air, after Cramer interviewed IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and asked whether quantum computers could eventually crack the cryptography protecting his coins. “I think that you should give yourself three or four years,” Krishna replied, “and at that point, I would get rather paranoid about it.” Cramer didn’t wait. “Arvind Krishna knows quantum incredibly. He knows Bitcoin and quantum. And I’m going to sell mine,” he said, adding that Ethereum might be “even worse.” Bitcoin rose about 1.6% the day he announced it.

Crypto traders greeted the news with open glee, invoking the “inverse Cramer” trade, the running joke that the reliable move is the opposite of whatever he recommends. “Thank you Jim!” read one top reply. Of course, Cramer has a history of selling the bottom. Cramer said he’d dumped all his crypto and wouldn’t touch it “in a million years” in December 2022 with Bitcoin near $16,800, and it gained more than 400% over the next three years.

But Cramer’s poor track record aside, the quantum threat is a very real one for crypto. AI was credited with the recent Coldcard exploit, which has passed $100M in losses. And it came after a string of DeFi hacks and exploits totalling well over $300M. The hard part to fathom—this is the worst these models are ever going to be.

With that said, the silver lining is a major security incident like the Coldcard one may be exactly what crypto teams needed to take the quantum threat seriously and begin taking action. Protocols like ZEC went on the offensive and used frontier AI to find exploit vectors in their own cryptography (and they found them, and patched them). ZEC sold off of course, but has since rebounded swiftly. Other protocols should follow their lead, and ASAP.

So Jim Cramer is right to be concerned. Will he end up selling the bottom for the 2nd cycle in a row? We will find out soon enough…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly green while stocks hit new ATHs; BTC +0.5% at $64.1k; ETH even at $1,868; SOL even at $73.70; HYPE +3% at $57
• Top alt movers include PUMP (+13%), ZEC (+6%) and LIT (+3%)
• Oil -5% at $76.20; Gold +1.9% at $4,230
• Stock futures are green again after making new ATHs on Tuesday; DOW +0.4%, Nasdaq +0.2%
• SpaceX topped Wall Street revenue forecasts but booked a $540M Bitcoin markdown, with its 18,712 BTC falling in value to $1.10B from $1.64B
• Justin Drake and five other researchers proposed EIP-8361 to curb Ethereum inflation, a “Tapered Issuance Burn” that would destroy a rising share of validator rewards as staking grows, cutting yield to about 1% at today’s ~33% staked and to 0% once half of all ETH is staked
• Cloudflare launched Cloudflare Wallets, letting AI agents autonomously pay for APIs and content via x402 stablecoin micropayments within human-set spending guardrails
• Circle posted $701 million in Q2 revenue as USDC circulation grew 19% to $73.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA rose 8% to $143 million, with its Arc mainnet slated for September 16 (CRCL +5%)
• Ledger weighed in on the Coldcard exploit as AI reshapes wallet security, arguing the attack marks a turning point where AI-driven vulnerability hunting forces hardware makers to rethink how they audit and defend their firmware
• Wells Fargo will offer tokenized deposits for 24/7 corporate payments, joining JPMorgan and Citi in the race to move Wall Street’s settlement rails onchain
• Samsung is poised to become a dominant stablecoin distributor, according to analysts, with its wallet’s reach across hundreds of millions of devices positioning it as a major on-ramp for stablecoin payments
• BitGo’s WBTC moved to Chainlink, pushing the LayerZero-to-Chainlink tally near $15 billion

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly red; DOGE -1%, SHIB -3%, PEPE -2%, PENGU -1%, TRUMP -1%, BONK even
• Robinhood chain was very green led by Cashcat (+40% to $96M), Tendies (+38%) and Frong (+78%); PONS steady at $20M after releasing V2
• Solana leaders included Cupsey (+58%), Stonk (+165%) and Kimchi (+90%); CATE fell another 40% to $18M, ANSEM -7% to $170M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Uniswap teased its new product “pools dot trade” launching today
• New Solana launchpad StonkFun caught momentum on Tuesday, as it pairs pre-IPO stocks with memecoins
• Proof of Play is winding down after failing to find a sustainable model, open-sourcing its code and freeing its Pirate Nation IP under CC0, while the PIRATE token lives on independently (PIRATE at $1M after reaching $100M+)
• The Eliza project founded by Shaw Walters is officially shutting down and winding down it foundation, turning the token and remaining treasury over to a group of holders

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were slightly red; Punks -1% at 31.7 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.33 ETH, Pudgy even at 3.87 ETH; Stonkbrokers -8% to 5.9 ETH
• Merry Men (+550%), pyo (+50%) and Zaibatsu (+15%) led top movers
• TokenWorks announced 30% buybacks for FWA using historical platform fees alongside the 80% go-forward buybacks, as the token went live for trading at 3 pm ET yesterday (FWA -20% to $7M)