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TL;DR
The US-Iran ceasefire sparked a broad rally, but cracks appeared within 48 hours as Israel launched its largest strikes on Lebanon since the war began, killing over 250 people and threatening to unravel the deal
Bitcoin rallied to $72,700 on the ceasefire news, triggering $600 million in liquidations (mostly shorts), and has held above $70,000 despite renewed uncertainty
Google's latest quantum paper reduced the estimated qubit threshold for breaking Bitcoin's encryption by ~20x, but no machine capable of executing the attack exists, and Bitcoin is already preparing with BIP-360
The weekly MACD is nearing its first bullish crossover since May 2025, sentiment has been at extreme fear levels for a record stretch, and Cathie Wood says the era of 85%+ drawdowns is over
Last week's podcast featured Kevin Bell of Cadena Bitcoin, a non-custodial Bitcoin lending platform registered in El Salvador
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🕊️ Ceasefire Rally, Ceasefire Doubt
On Tuesday evening, President Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran via Truth Social. Markets reacted immediately. Bitcoin surged from around $68,000 to a three-week high of $72,700. Oil crashed more than 10%, with WTI falling to roughly $95 per barrel. Nearly $600 million in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated, the vast majority from short sellers caught on the wrong side of the move.
For a few hours, it felt like a turning point.
Then reality set in. Within 48 hours, the ceasefire began showing cracks. Iran's Parliament Speaker said three clauses of the agreement had been breached. The Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global oil supply, remains effectively closed despite the deal. Iran has reportedly demanded that tankers pay tolls in cryptocurrency to pass through.
The situation in Lebanon made things worse. Hours after the ceasefire announcement, Israel launched what it described as its most powerful strikes on Lebanon since the war began, hitting over 100 targets in ten minutes. The attacks struck densely populated areas of Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon without warning, killing at least 254 people and wounding over 1,100 according to Lebanon's Civil Defence. Israel said the ceasefire does not include Lebanon. The US backed that position. Iran, Pakistan, and France disagreed, and Hezbollah responded by launching missiles into northern Israel on April 9.
In response, Iran threatened to attack Israel directly if its operations in Lebanon don't stop and reportedly re-closed the Strait of Hormuz. Oil has already begun rebounding toward $97.
Iran has begun accepting payments in bitcoin for oil tankers wishing to pass through the Strait of Hormuz at a price of $1 per barrel of oil. It makes sense, since bitcoin can’t be sanctioned or censored.
This is a situation where uncertainty is the only certainty. Traditional markets are swinging on every headline, oil is untradeable, bonds are selling off, and even gold has lost its footing. The irony is that bitcoin, long criticized as the volatile one, has been among the steadiest assets over the past two weeks.
🔬 Google's Quantum Paper: More Signal, Same Conclusion
On March 31, Google Quantum AI published a significant new paper titled Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities, co-authored with researchers from the Ethereum Foundation and Stanford.
The core finding: a quantum computer capable of breaking the elliptic curve cryptography that protects Bitcoin wallets (ECDSA) would require far fewer resources than previously estimated. The paper presents implementations of Shor's algorithm that need roughly 1,200 to 1,450 logical qubits and 70 to 90 million operations to crack a key. When translated to physical hardware, that comes out to approximately 500,000 physical qubits, a roughly 20x reduction from the previous estimate of around 10 million.
That's meaningful. I won't pretend otherwise. This is more serious than the quantum fear-mongering I've covered in previous newsletters, where altcoin founders and conference speakers with clear financial incentives were hyping the threat to sell their own tokens.
This paper has real names attached to it. Craig Gidney, one of the lead researchers, has been working on these problems for years. Scott Aaronson, one of the most respected voices in quantum computing, summarized the situation well: these papers don't change the basic principles of quantum computing that we've known for decades, but they do change the numbers.
Here's what hasn't changed: no quantum computer capable of executing this attack exists (and won’t for a while). Current machines operate in the range of hundreds to low thousands of noisy physical qubits, with error rates far too high for the kind of sustained, fault-tolerant computation the paper describes. As Fireblocks VP of Research Michael Gutkin put it, when people hear "1,200 qubits" and see that today's processors have 1,000+, they think we're close. We're not. Those are noisy physical qubits. Getting to 500,000 fault-tolerant ones requires breakthroughs in qubit quality, error correction, and thermal management that are measured in years, not months.
Google itself set a 2029 target for migrating to post-quantum cryptography. That's Google's own internal deadline for protecting their systems, not a prediction of when attacks become possible.
And Bitcoin isn't idle. BIP-360, which I covered in a recent newsletter, has already had its first test launch on a Bitcoin testnet. It obfuscates public key addresses, eliminating the theoretical attack vector where a quantum computer would need an exposed public key to derive a private key. The network has a long history of adapting deliberately and in the open to credible threats, long before they become urgent.
The broader point remains the same one I've been making for over a year now: quantum computing is real and advancing. The threat to all modern encryption, not just Bitcoin, is real and will eventually need to be addressed (probably decades from now). But the people shouting loudest about an imminent crisis tend to have something to sell.
And large tech companies creating deadlines for post-quantum encryption as soon as three years from now doesn’t mean we’re doomed by then. They place these standards on themselves in an attempt to be thoroughly cautious and prepare long before the threat arises.
Sources: Google Quantum AI Paper | Fireblocks Analysis | Blockspace Summary | The Block
📊 Is the Bottom In?
I'm not going to make a definitive call here, because no one can. But the signals are stacking up in an interesting way.
Weekly MACD nearing a bullish crossover. The weekly MACD indicator is approaching its first bullish golden cross since May 2025. For context, the last time this crossover occurred, bitcoin climbed from $94,000 to $119,000 over the following two months, setting a new all-time high. Galaxy Trading noted that in both the 2018 and 2022 bear markets, it took approximately 245 days for the weekly MACD to turn positive. In 2026, we reach 245 days by the end of April.
Bitcoin has also reclaimed the 200-week exponential moving average on a weekly closing basis, a level that has historically acted as generational support during bear markets.
Extreme fear for a record stretch. Social media bearishness toward Bitcoin recently reached its highest level since late February, and the Fear & Greed Index has spent an unusually prolonged stretch in fear territory. Historically, extended periods of extreme fear have preceded meaningful reversals. The last time sentiment looked like this on the daily was February 7, 2026, and the last time the index hit extreme greed was October 5, 2025.
It’s worth noting that in the last several days, the crypto fear and greed index has recovered sharply, closer to “neutral” levels.
Cathie Wood's structural argument. In an April 1 CNBC Squawk Box interview, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood argued that Bitcoin's era of 85% to 95% drawdowns from all-time highs is over. Her reasoning centers on the institutionalization of the asset class. With large financial institutions now accumulating bitcoin for long-term portfolios, the structural floor has shifted. She described Bitcoin as a "proven technology" and "proven monetary system," and said that a 50% drawdown from the all-time high would actually be considered a victory by the Bitcoin community given previous cycle norms.
The current drawdown from the October 2025 all-time high near $126,000 sits at roughly 40% at current prices around $73,000. That's significant, but it's measurably less severe than the 77% drop in 2022, the 84% in 2018, or the 93% in 2014-2015.
I've been saying for a long time that I expect bear market drawdowns to become either less pronounced or more short-lived due to institutional capital and increased adoption. What we're seeing so far is consistent with that thesis.
Counterpoints worth noting. Not everyone agrees. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone has warned that prices could trend toward seven-year lows. The bear flag pattern that appeared in January, which preceded a ~$25,000 drop, may be forming again. Keith Alan of Material Indicators noted that the current price action is structurally almost identical to that prior bear flag. And some traders see February's wick below $60,000 as a level that will be revisited.
Manage your risk accordingly. Conviction without a plan is just hope.
Sources: Cointelegraph | Cointelegraph/Cathie Wood | Finbold
🎙️ This Week on the Hard Money Dispatch Podcast
On this episode of Hard Money Dispatch, I sat down with Kevin Bell, CFA, founder and CEO of Cadena Bitcoin.
Kevin spent 25 years in traditional finance, including roles on the trading floors of CIBC and Credit Suisse, working in FX derivatives and institutional risk management. He also ran an award-winning mortgage brokerage in Canada. Then he left.
The catalyst, as he's described publicly, wasn't purely financial. It was watching the Canadian government freeze bank accounts of donors and protesters during the trucker convoy in 2022. That experience, combined with years of watching central banks debase currencies, pushed him to build something different.
Cadena Bitcoin is a non-custodial, Bitcoin-only lending and borrowing platform registered in El Salvador. The key differentiator: your coins never leave your wallet. Not for a second. Kevin built it specifically as the antithesis of BlockFi, Celsius, and FTX, all of which collapsed because users handed over custody of their assets.
The platform uses programmable contracts directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. No side-chains, no wrapped tokens, no custodians. Kevin's philosophy on this is straightforward and uncompromising.
A few takeaways from this episode:
Why non-custodial lending is the only model that aligns with Bitcoin's principles
How Kevin's decades in institutional FX inform Cadena's approach to settlement risk
What El Salvador's regulatory environment looks like for Bitcoin service providers
The case for bitcoin as an uncorrelated portfolio diversifier (from someone who traded billions in FX)
Why he believes the fiat experiment is failing, and what that means for the next generation
🎧 Listen to the full episode through the links below:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/self-custody-bitcoin-lending-is-here-heres-how-it-works/id1649814816?i=1000759158356
YouTube:
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🎬 New on YouTube
I just published a video breaking down one of the most common crypto scams right now: fake seed phrases posted in YouTube comments and on X. You've probably seen them. Someone "accidentally" shares their 12-word recovery phrase, there's money visible in the wallet, and your instinct is to check it out. That instinct is exactly what the scammers are counting on.
In the video, I walk through how sweeper bots drain your funds in milliseconds, why the psychology behind this trap is so effective, and how these operations scale into millions. If you're in crypto, it's worth 10 minutes of your time. If you know someone new to the space, send it to them.
Watch it here:
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To your sovereignty and prosperity,
Brian Dean Nibley
Nothing in this newsletter shall be considered investment advice. Do your own research.