Bitcoin (BTC) was treading water just below $85,000 late Thursday as tensions between U.S. President Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell added another layer of uncertainty for investors.

Markets dipped on Wednesday after hawkish comments from Powell, who criticized Trump’s tariffs policy, saying that it would likely result in a slowing economy and rising prices — what economists call “stagflation.” In his remarks, Powell made clear his larger focus for now would be on prices, suggesting tighter Fed policy than otherwise thought.

Trump — who nominated the former investment banker and lawyer as Fed chair during his first term (Powell was given a second four-year term by President Biden) — has expressed his displeasure with Powell since retaking the White House. Powell, though, who is set to remain atop the central bank until May 2026, has repeatedly stated his determination to finish his term and suggested the president has no standing to fire him.

On Thursday, the WSJ reported that Trump has been privately discussing firing Powell for months, according to people familiar with the matter. Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh is reportedly waiting in the wings as Powell’s replacement, but Warsh has lobbied the president not to move against the Fed chair, according to the story.

Joining Warsh in that warning is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said the move could roil already shaky U.S. markets as the central bank is supposed to be independent from political influences.

Odds of Trump removing Powell this year on the blockchain-based prediction market Polymarket rose to 19%, the highest reading since the contract’s late January launch.

Trump’s comments came on the back of the European Central Bank (ECB) cutting key interest rates for the seventh consecutive occasion on Thursday as it warned of a deteriorating growth outlook.

More pressure on markets came from the latest Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index, published Thursday morning, which showed a nosedive in activity this month, sinking to its lowest level (-26.4) in two years. Meanwhile, the prices paid index climbed to its highest reading since July 2022, adding to concerns about the Trump administration’s large-scale tariff policy pushing the U.S. economy into stagflation.

The S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq stock indexes traded mostly flat during the day.

A look at the crypto market showed BTC and Ethereum’s ETH up 0.8% over the past 24 hours. Most assets in the CoinDesk 20 Index traded higher during the day, with bitcoin cash (BCH), NEAR and AAVE leading gains.

How bitcoin traders position amid heightened fear on Wall Street ?

Bitcoin has stabilized between $83k and $86k with traders chasing bullish bets while still seeking downside protection.

On Deribit, traders are actively chasing calls at the 90k to $100k strikes expiring in May and June, the exchange said in a market update Thursday. The demand for calls indicates expectations for a continued price rally.

Some of these bullish bets have been funded by premiums collected by selling put options.

At the same time, there has been renewed interest in buying put options at $80k expiring this month, representing preparations for potential price declines. Buying a put option is akin to purchasing insurance against price slides.

The diverse two-way flow comes as the VIX, Wall Street’s fear gauge measuring the 30-day implied volatility, still remains well above its 50-day average, despite the pullback from recent highs above 50.

The VIX is warning that the macro situation is still unraveling rather than resolving, the exchange said on X.

Recently, Project Eleven (a quantum computing research group) announced a 1 bitcoin reward for the first team able to complete a challenge to demonstrate breaking a ECC (elliptic curve cryptograph) key using Shor’s algorithm on a quantum computer. 

The deadline for this challenge is April 5th, 2026, meaning in order to qualify for the prize a team must demonstrate breaking a key pair it must be done before that deadline. 

This is frankly a completely absurd and meaningless prize for a number of reasons, the first of which is the deadline of just under a year from today. Even highly optimistic projections about the progress of quantum computing put the timeline of practically achieving such a goal at more like 5-10 years. Expecting a workable proof of concept demonstration that actually breaks a keypair in a single year is pretty laughable at face value, even if you do view quantum computing as a material threat in the short term. 

Next is the factor of economic incentives. A single bitcoin is currently worth approximately $80,000. That is frankly not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Especially when it comes to the application of a cutting edge technology like quantum computing that can perform an entire class of computation exponentially faster than a classical computer. Imagine how much more valuable things could be done with a working quantum computer. 

You could eavesdrop on internet connections regardless of TLS, breaking secure connections to banks, equity brokerages, private corporate networks not using post-quantum cryptography. You could break every private messenger application on the planet, you could decrypt any PGP encrypted message sent over email that you knew the public key for. You could break the entire DNS system’s certificate authority hierarchy, allowing you to impersonate any server in the world a user tries to connect to. 

All of these things have immeasurable value beyond just a mere $84,000. Why on Earth would someone with a working quantum computer publicly reveal that fact to claim a single bitcoin when they could take advantage of all these other things they would be capable of doing?

Okay, let’s sweep all of those possibilities aside and pretend the entire world magically migrates to post-quantum cryptography aside from Bitcoin. It still makes no sense to try to publicly claim this prize if you have a functional quantum computer. 

Let’s assume you have a barely performant enough quantum computer, that it takes a decent amount of time to crack a single key. How many bare public keys are there securing 50 BTC outputs from the first mining epoch? THOUSANDS of them. Why on Earth would you crack one, and then go tell everyone publicly to claim a single bitcoin? You would just try to crack as many of those early coinbase rewards as possible before people detected you. 

Finally, the timetable on its own is just absurd. Quantum computers currently are not even capable of factoring prime numbers that people can do themselves in their heads mentally. In a single year the technology is going to jump from that to cracking Bitcoin keys? That’s absurd. 

So what the hell is the point of this prize except some publicity stunt? It’s utterly meaningless as a serious bounty to function as a canary in the coalmine for us, no matter how concerned or unconcerned you are with the timeframes of quantum computers as a threat. 

This bounty is a joke.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

A top Coinbase researcher says signs of a long-term crypto bear market are starting to emerge.

David Duong, the global head of research at Coinbase, says in a new analysis that the 200-day moving average (MA) indicates bearishness for Bitcoin (BTC) and the Coinbase 50 Index (COIN50), which tracks the performance of the 50 largest digital assets by market cap.

“As Bitcoin’s role as a ‘store of value’ continues to grow, we think a holistic evaluation of crypto’s aggregate market activity will be needed to better define bull and bear markets for the asset class, particularly as we’re likely to see increasingly diverse behavior in its expanding sectors.

Nevertheless, both BTC and the COIN50 index have recently broken below their respective 200-day MAs, which signals potential bearish long-term trends in the overall market. This is consistent with the fall in the total crypto market cap and decline in venture capital funding for this space, hallmarks of a potential crypto winter rising.”

The analyst says if a crypto bear market does set in, a bullish reversal could start taking shape sometime between July and September.

“Thus, we think this warrants taking a defensive stance on risk for the time being, though we still believe that crypto prices may be able to find their floor in mid-to-late 2Q25 – setting up a better 3Q25.”

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