Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has issued a stark warning about the country's economic trajectory, linking its struggles to monetary policy failures and advocating for **bitcoin** as a potential remedy. In a recent interview, Truss highlighted the UK's rapid relative impoverishment and criticized the lack of debate around sound money.

### The Economic Warning
Truss, who served as prime minister for just 45 days in 2022, stated that the UK economy is on a **"very negative trajectory"** and faces long-term decline. She attributed this to high taxes, excessive regulation, and rising energy costs, which she claims create disincentives for entrepreneurs. "We are getting relatively poorer, very quickly," she emphasized, pointing to weak growth and increasing state control.

### Bitcoin as a Tool Against Debasement
A key part of Truss's critique focuses on **currency debasement**—the erosion of sterling's value due to inflation and money printing. She argued that many economic problems stem from this lack of sound money, describing the absence of monetary policy discussions in government as **"quite sinister"** and a taboo. Truss revealed she is **"very interested"** in bitcoin, which she first encountered while working at the Treasury, where she mentioned it to "shake things up." She views bitcoin as a tool to push back against centralized control and financial independence limitations.

### Reflections on the Mini-Budget Fallout
Truss defended the 2022 mini-budget under Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, which led to market turmoil during her premiership. She maintained that it exposed hidden fragilities in the system, such as leveraged pension strategies, rather than causing the issues. "There was a tinderbox in the system that people didn’t know about," she said.

### Launching CPAC UK
Now out of government, Truss is focusing on building a political movement, including the launch of **CPAC UK**, a three-day conference aimed at uniting activists and entrepreneurs around **"sovereignty and liberty"** themes. She framed the stakes bluntly: "There are two choices, either we’re finished or we change it." This initiative seeks to address what she sees as a need for broader economic reform and decentralization.

![Liz Truss speaks at CPAC in Texas last month. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)](https://www.coindesk.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2Fs3y3vcno%2Fproduction%2F79097322f32ca491b677089ab91e16060a93ae23-5392x3592.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat&w=3840&q=75)

Truss criticized central banking and defended her mini-budget, suggesting bitcoin and a CPAC UK conference could help push for economic reform.

Liz Truss Sounds Alarm on UK Economic Decline, Champions Bitcoin as a Solution

In Part 1 of this series, we explored the fundamentals of quantum computing. Now, we dive into the target: **Bitcoin's encryption**, why a quantum algorithm can break it, and how Google's recent paper has shifted the timeline.

### The One-Way Map of Bitcoin Security
Bitcoin relies on **elliptic curve cryptography** to secure ownership. Each wallet has two keys: a **private key** (a secret 256-digit number) and a **public key** derived from it via a mathematical operation on the curve "secp256k1." Think of this as a one-way map: starting from a known point G, your private key determines a number of steps, ending at your public key K. While calculating K from the private key is easy, reversing this to find the private key from K is the **elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem**—estimated to take classical computers longer than the age of the universe.

This one-way trapdoor is Bitcoin's security foundation. Your private key proves ownership without being revealed, and your public key is safe to share.

### How Shor's Algorithm Breaks the Trapdoor
In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor discovered a **quantum algorithm** that efficiently solves the discrete logarithm problem. It works by finding the period of a function related to the elliptic curve, using quantum properties like **superposition**, **entanglement**, and **interference**. By evaluating all possible inputs simultaneously and filtering out wrong answers, Shor's algorithm can derive a private key from a public key in polynomial time, making what was once impossible feasible.

### Why Bitcoin Remains Secure Today
Despite Shor's algorithm being known for over 30 years, running it requires a **quantum computer with enough stable qubits**. Previous estimates suggested millions of qubits, but Google's recent paper, with contributions from the Ethereum Foundation and Stanford, reduced this to **fewer than 500,000**. The paper details circuits using about 1,200-1,450 logical qubits and millions of Toffoli gates, with a high ratio of physical to logical qubits due to error correction needs.

### The Nine-Minute Attack Window
Google's paper introduces a practical attack scenario. By precomputing parts of Shor's algorithm based on public curve parameters, a quantum computer can be primed to finish the calculation in about **nine minutes** once a target public key appears. With Bitcoin's average block time of 10 minutes, this gives an attacker a **roughly 41% chance** to steal funds from a transaction in the mempool before it confirms.

More concerning is the **6.9 million Bitcoin** (about one-third of the supply) in wallets where public keys are already exposed on the blockchain. These are vulnerable to an "at-rest" attack with no time pressure. Since Taproot's privacy upgrade in November 2021, public keys for newer transactions are visible, while older addresses expose them upon spending, triggering the nine-minute race.

What this means for exposed Bitcoin, Taproot's impact, and the hardware progress will be covered in the final part of this series.

Part one explained the physics of quantum computing. This piece explains the target — how bitcoin's encryption works, why a quantum algorithm breaks it, and what Google's paper changed about the timeline.

Quantum Computers Could Steal Your Bitcoin in Just 9 Minutes – Here's How

Crypto investors have watched **Ethereum** (CRYPTO:ETH) trade in a narrow range near $2,362 while Bitcoin hovers around $76,000 and institutional money quietly builds positions in digital assets. Adoption metrics keep climbing — stablecoins on Ethereum now handle trillions in annual volume, and layer-2 networks process thousands of transactions per second. Yet price action feels stuck. That disconnect sets the stage for **BitMine Immersion Technologies** (NYSE:BMNR) chairman Tom Lee's long-term call.

In a presentation at the Paris Blockchain Week 2026 conference, Lee lays out a clear path for Ethereum to reach a $62,500 fair value by 2030. He first outlined the framework last September and has stood by the numbers since.

## Decoding the Numbers

Lee's forecast rests on **Bitcoin** (CRYPTO:BTC), or three ETH-to-BTC ratio benchmarks, to be precise. The eight-year average ratio sits at 0.0479, but today, the actual ratio has tumbled to 0.0320 — 33% below that long-term norm. At its peak in 2021, Ethereum's ratio reached 0.0873.

Lee believes Ethereum's current price range is a consolidation phase that it is just breaking out of. Previous breakouts occurred between 2016 and 2017, when ETH went from $6 to $1,366, a 227x increase, and 2019 to 2021, when ETH rose 54x to $4,626. He sees tokenization and agentic AI causing the next breakout.

Lee anchors everything to Fundstrat's $250,000 Bitcoin target. Plug in the average ratio and you get roughly $12,000 Ethereum. Hit the 2021 high and the price climbs to about $22,000. Those are the base and bull cases. The ultra-bull scenario of Bitcoin going to $1 million delivers Ethereum to $62,500, but requires the ratio to expand to 0.25.

Simply put, Lee's prediction translates historical ratios into dollar targets without hype. It's just an equation: ratio times Bitcoin price equals Ethereum price. As you can see, the $62,500 call is the outlier requiring a Goldilocks scenario.

## The Factors Behind Lee's 2030 Outlook

However, two drivers stand out. First, Ethereum's role as the settlement layer for Wall Street and AI infrastructure. Lee notes that the majority of stablecoin creation already happens on Ethereum, giving it a head start as financial institutions tokenize real-world assets. Second comes the "replacement-cost" lens. Global payment rails and traditional banking infrastructure carry enormous overhead. Ethereum's ability to handle settlement at fractions of that cost implies a much higher equilibrium value. When the ratio hits 0.25, the implied price lands at $62,500.

Lee ties this to broader crypto trends: Bitcoin captures the store-of-value narrative while Ethereum powers the productive side — staking yields, layer-2 scaling, and on-chain finance. BitMine itself demonstrates the thesis in action by holding millions of ETH tokens and generating weekly staking revenue that compounds as the network grows.

The data indicates Ethereum is not just another altcoin; it functions as digital infrastructure with measurable utility.

## Weighing Feasibility by 2030

Granted, $62,500 from today's $2,362 represents a 26-fold increase in roughly four years. While crypto history includes similar moves — Ethereum itself has seen such melt ups before — past performance never guarantees future results. Lee acknowledged the gap existing between the current 0.0432 ratio and the required 0.25, as that jump demands sustained institutional adoption, regulatory clarity, and continued network upgrades. Bitcoin would also need to reach Lee's $250,000 mark on schedule.

That said, there is precedent: Ethereum has staged V-shaped recoveries after each of its eight major drawdowns since 2018. Volatility, though, remains the biggest risk. A prolonged "mini-crypto winter," tighter regulation, or slower layer-2 uptake could keep the ratio compressed. Still, the core logic holds: if Ethereum captures even a slice of the global financial plumbing, the replacement-cost math works.

Lee's $62,500 target by 2030 is ambitious but grounded in specific ratio data and Ethereum's infrastructure edge. Lee is confident in history repeating itself. BitMine has bought Ethereum throughout its crashes and consolidations. Last week, it reported owning 4.875 million ETH tokens, or more than 4% of the total ETH supply of 120.7 million. That puts BitMine 81% of the way to its "Alchemy of 5%" goal.

Yet, BitMine also suffers staggering losses on every crypto decline. It just reported a quarterly loss of $3.8 billion, primarily due to unrealized losses from the decline in Ethereum's price. And because it has gone nearly all-in on ETH, the stock carries substantial single-asset risk. Smart investors won't do the same. Instead, they should limit their exposure and not allow BitMine stock to become too large of a position in their portfolio.

Of course, the best option just might be to buy ETH itself. Cut out the middleman and all the inherent risk that comes with it.

Crypto investors have watched Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) trade in a narrow range near $2,362 while Bitcoin hovers around $76,000 and institutional money quietly builds positions in digital assets. Adoption metrics keep climbing — stablecoins on Ethereum now handle trillions in annual volume, and layer-2 networks process thousands of transactions per second. Yet price action feels stuck. ... Why BitMine’s Tom Lee Sees Ethereum at $62,500 in 2030 — and What the Numbers Actually Show

4 days ago Bitcoin Articles Digested