Kevin O'Leary Ties $1m Bitcoin Call to Solving the Quantum Computing Threat

Investor Kevin O'Leary has said Bitcoin could reach $1m, but only once the industry deals with the risk that quantum computers could one day break the cryptography protecting its wallets.

He made the remarks in an interview at Avalanche Summit, where he appeared with an $11m Shohei Ohtani baseball card hanging from his neck in a Tiffany case set with 110 carats of diamonds, to make a point about tokenisation. The interview led Decrypt's Morning Minute newsletter, written by Tyler Warner, whose analysis reflects his own views rather than Decrypt's.

The quantum condition

O'Leary's caveat centres on Q-Day, the point at which a quantum computer would be able to forge the signatures that secure Bitcoin wallets.

No such machine exists. Estimates of when one might arrive range from the early 2030s to never.

O'Leary argued that the uncertainty alone explains why large funds keep Bitcoin exposure to around 3%, treating it as a small slice of a gold-like allocation rather than a core position. If Bitcoin's developers can remove that doubt, he said, the cap would rise.

The concern is technical but not new. Bitcoin relies on digital signatures that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could in theory break. Moving to quantum-resistant schemes would require changes agreed across a decentralised network of developers, miners and users, a process that is deliberately slow.

A reversal on Ethereum

The bigger shift was on Ethereum. Eighteen months ago, O'Leary argued that a portfolio of Bitcoin and Ethereum would capture 97% of the upside in crypto, since the market would settle on Ethereum as its standard.

He now says that did not happen and that he does not expect it to, describing Ethereum as neither fast enough nor secure enough. He stressed that this was his personal opinion.

His new view is that whole industries will choose their own chains. Whichever blockchain the first major exchange adopts for tokenisation, he argued, could see its token rise sharply, because it would become the infrastructure every trade runs through.

Tokenisation edges closer

The timing is notable. The previous week, the SEC approved its Innovation Exemption for tokenised stocks. Separately, ICE is assessing whether Avalanche could serve as the settlement layer for a trading system the New York Stock Exchange is developing.

O'Leary described crypto as becoming a twelfth sector of the S&P 500, on the grounds that it services the other eleven.

Warner was partly persuaded. He wrote that the quantum overhang is the main factor holding Bitcoin back and could limit its upside in the next bull cycle. But he disputed the Ethereum call, noting that Robinhood chose to build Robinhood Chain on Ethereum via Arbitrum. Some companies may build their own chains, he argued, but existing networks will still produce large tokenisation winners, and Ethereum remains in pole position.

Market backdrop and caveats

The comments came as crypto prices rose. The newsletter put Bitcoin up 6% at about $85,700 and ether up 6% at $2,735. US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $433m of net inflows on Friday, while Ethereum funds added $143m and Solana funds $48m.

O'Leary's $1m figure is conditional and comes without a timeline, and the 3% allocation ceiling is his characterisation of institutional behaviour rather than a published data point. His view that Ethereum will lose ground to industry-specific chains is, by his own account, an opinion.

The developments worth tracking are more concrete: any progress towards quantum-resistant signatures for Bitcoin, whether ICE settles on Avalanche, and which chains major exchanges choose as tokenised stock trading develops under the SEC's exemption.