Morning Minute: Kevin O’Leary Calls for $1 Million Bitcoin, With an Asterisk

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 daily news show ‘FOMO HOUR’ covering all of the top stories and market action.

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Today’s top news:

Crypto majors are very green up 5-7%; BTC at $85.7k; HYPE at $94
Alt leaders soar with 25 of the crypto top 100 up 10% or more; SEI & SUI lead
Kevin O’Leary calls for $1M Bitcoin if quantum risk is addressed
Hyperliquid leads onchain protocols in weekly revenue followed by Pump, Stonk & Pons
Stonk ecosystem sees big green as Stonk pushes to $310M and new ATH

BitcoinBTC · USD

$86,056+9.6%

Sep 14Sep 16Sep 18Sep 19Sep 21

$86.1k$82.5k$79.0k$75.5k

24h HighHigh$85,769

24h LowLow$80,631

VolVol$2.2B

Market projectionsOdds by Myriad

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💸 Kevin O’Leary Calls for $1 Million Bitcoin, With an Asterisk

Kevin O’Leary showed up at Avalanche Summit wearing an $11 million Shohei Ohtani baseball card around his neck, sealed in a Tiffany holder with 110 carats of diamonds. He used it to make a point about tokenization, then spent the rest of the interview explaining why Bitcoin gets to $1 million, but only if the industry solves a problem that doesn’t quite exist yet.

His condition is Q-Day, the point at which a quantum computer could forge the signatures securing every Bitcoin wallet. No such machine exists, and estimates for when one arrives run from the early 2030s to never. O’Leary says the doubt alone is why large funds cap Bitcoin exposure near 3%, treating it as a sliver of gold rather than a core holding. If Bitcoin devs can resolve the doubt, that cap moves.

The bigger reversal was on Ethereum. Eighteen months ago his thesis was that owning Bitcoin and Ethereum captured 97% of crypto’s upside because everyone would standardize on Ethereum. He now says that didn’t happen and he doesn’t think it will, calling ETH not fast enough and not secure enough, flagging it as his own opinion. He now thinks entire industries pick their own chain, and whichever blockchain the first major exchange adopts for tokenization sees that token go through the roof because it becomes the plumbing every trade runs through.

Of course, this interview was very timely. The SEC approved its Innovation Exemption for tokenized stocks last week, and ICE is evaluating Avalanche as the settlement layer for the NYSE’s in-development trading system. O’Leary frames crypto as becoming the twelfth sector of the S&P because it services the other eleven.

As for O’Leary’s opinions, there is some validity to them. Certainly the quantum overhang is the main thing keeping Bitcoin down and may even cap its upside in this upcoming bull cycle. As for Ethereum and tokenization, well Robinhood would disagree. They chose to build on Ethereum with Robinhood Chain (via Arbitrum) and tokenization is accelerating rapidly across crypto-native blockchains. Some companies may choose to build on their own, sure, but there will be big tokenization winners for our existing chains. And Ethereum is still in pole position…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

Crypto majors are very green up 5-7%; BTC +6% at $85.7k; ETH +6% at $2,735; SOL +9% at $119; HYPE +4% at $94; ZEC +6% at $1,521
Top alt movers include SEI (27%), SUI (+27%), NEAR (+12%) and VVV (+14%); 25 alts in the top 100 were up 10% or more
Oil -3% at $97; Gold -1% at $4,380
Stock futures are very green as oil and bond yields fall; DOW +0.8%, Nasdaq +1%
The CFTC sent a crypto prerule to the White House two days after the Clarity Act failed, titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets,” signaling it will build a derivatives framework on its own authority.
Coinbase filed with the CFTC to list single-stock perpetual futures, starting with roughly 50 to 60 contracts including Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, and Nvidia, on a 45-day review running to November 2
Visa is closing the merchant-code loophole that let meme coin purchases earn credit card rewards through Crossmint checkouts on Robinhood Wallet and Fomo, with the grace period ending next week
Zcash targets NU7 for November 5, cutting block times from 75 seconds to 25 to make shielded payments roughly three times faster, with at least 60% of transaction fees supplementing mining rewards from 2031
Goldman Sachs and Citizens flagged Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle as early beneficiaries of the SEC’s tokenized-stock exemption, citing custody, tokenization infrastructure, and stablecoin settlement
Gemini’s market value has fallen to about $753 million, down 80% from its IPO, reviving takeover speculation around the licenses, custody infrastructure, and customer relationships a buyer would inherit

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

The Bitcoin ETFs saw $433M in net inflows on Friday; the ETH ETFs saw $143M in inflows; and the SOL ETFs saw $48M
Grayscale’s Zcash ETF will run a 3-for-1 forward split effective September 30, after pulling in more than $233 million since its August 25 debut and approaching $890 million in assets

Meme Coin Tracker

Meme leaders were very green up 5-10%; DOGE +10%, SHIB +7%, PEPE +8%, PENGU +8%, TRUMP +6%, SPX +11%
Robinhood chain leaders were green and rebounding after a red weekend; Pons +8% to $420M; AI +20% at $280M; Cashcat +23% at $180M; Orbio +70%, ZZZ +80% and Index +15% led top movers
Solana top movers were led by Stamp +600x, Zebra +110x, and Rawr (+180%); Ansem +20% to $169M
The Stonk eco rallied as Stonk +30% to $310M, ZCAT +18% to $120M, Knots +33% to $24M, Allinu +30% to $20M and Nearkat +88% to $14M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 29.7 ETH, BAYC -3% at 6.5 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 3.28 ETH
Identity MD (+49%), Mad Lads (+36%) and Kaoforms (+65%) led top movers
Zksnarks fell to a 0.7 ZEC floor from their 1.5 ZEC mint out in first weekend of trading
FWA rebounded 100% on the week to $20M after its v2 release, seeing more demand with their decaying Punks (someone won a Punk backed with just 1.9 ETH over the weekend)