Related. Replacing the IBM QPU with /dev/urandom

This branch applies a single surgical patch (−29 / +30 lines) to projecteleven.py. The patch replaces the IBM Quantum backend inside solve_ecdlp() with os.urandom. Everything else — circuit construction, the ripple‑carry oracle, the extraction pipeline, the d·G == Q verifier — runs byte‑for‑byte unchanged.

If the quantum computer were contributing measurable signal, this substitution should break the recoveries. It does not. The author's own CLI recovers every reported private key at statistically indistinguishable rates from the IBM hardware runs.

The verdict is as expected, Nic has been scammed and lost his BTC....

Here is current SEC guidance on pre-mines:

Sale of Pre-Mined Tokens: If the pre-mined tokens are sold or offered to investors, their status as securities is determined by the representations or promises made by the issuer at the time of sale.  If investors purchase these tokens with a reasonable expectation of profits derived from the essential managerial efforts of the issuer or a third party, the sale is likely subject to SEC securities laws.

So the legality of this is going to depend on are any "collaborators" putting up cash to fund this initiative. If they are, and that comes out, this could present legal challenges.

Further, I would add these little-discussed cases as well:

• the hackers themselves will not store their stolen coins in QC vulnerable addresses, thus the quantum vulnerability of bitcoin will heal itself rather quickly.
• Public labs and large QC entities (and any miners) that knowingly participate in this theft will be liable not only directly for the bitcoin stolen, but also from class action lawsuits from all bitcoin holders. Further such actions will go well past civil fines and will result in criminal penalties.

The second point offers another remediation that I haven't seen discussed: Legal Embargo.

Forget any changes to bitcoin protocol, simply a FINCEN related law / regulation is passed that (a) identifies all QC vulnerable addresses, and (b) sets a date (2030?), that says any transaction (mining, exchange, etc) involving those addresses past 2030 requires KYC and documented proof of ownership on those coins.

This isn't perfect. But it does offer a remediation - so whoever holds those coins (if still alive) will have a few years to move them KYC-free to safe addresses.

If we have large miners each pair with a quantum lab, they have no incentive to mine on top each other's blocks because there is a literal multi-million bitcoin incentive not to.

Aren't most of the large miners public companies?

That would result in massive lawsuits.

I would assume that the $10 billion is practically guaranteed and is the investment SpaceX would make

from what I understand the $10B is in in-kind compute use. Basically allowing Cursor to train / run its own models (or maybe Grok too) on xAI infrastructure.

Makes sense because xAI probably has spare capacity so basically they are taking something they are not using at moment and turning it into equity.

Where does the line get drawn? You are friends with someone who works at BigCorp XYZ.

He tells you they are collapsing and new massive lawsuit is pending....you dump. Should you go to jail?

I think Trump is scammy and a liar.

But, I'm not particularly in favor of these "insider trader laws". How else should new information propagate itself to markets?

Information is asymmetrical and there will always be those who have more than you....caveat emptor

Apple probably saved themselves untold billions by not rushing in AI. It could be argued they are a little late to having a local LLM built into their device, but well I'm just not sure how much demand there is even for one.

Your right that Google's search moat is probably going to push them to the top of whoever the final victors are...

Moreover, local LLMs are getting so good, its hard to even predict how any of this will playout. Local LLMs are already nearly good enough to replace most routine coding task, certainly good enough for home automation, etc.

An open question: Is Anthropic / OpenAI / etc profitable? Last I heard they weren't....what would real SOTA model use be if users had to pay actual prices?

You walk into a store, there are 2 packs of chicken breast there. Pack 1 is $5.99 and Pack 2 is $13.99 - assuming they are same weight which do you buy?

Pack 1 the chickens are born in cages, live crammed among each other, force fed a hormonal growth diet and then automated machines come and rip them apart.

Pack 2 the chickens have a marginally more 'humane' existence in that they are not confined to a tiny cage and get to walk around a bit.

If most humans bought Pack 2, then things would change instantly, but for a variety of reasons most humans choose Pack 1.

thats probably true. there is a related negative that generally never gets spoken about.

The promise "worldwide USDC" is it amortizes inflation over potential 7B people instead of the 600M or so now. Further much of that USD activity will siloed. So a person in Africa using USDC to buy sugar from another African is fairly insulated from global market, thus the effects of inflation are somewhat dampened.

This also delays the need for Bitcoin

Tangential, but I think its very possible that Anthropic has manufactured this situation. That is they likely specifically trained mythos exclusively to be adversarial cracker.

Point was to hype demand around the model.

In a sense this is no different than what happened in 90s-00s with anti-virus makers either indirectly (or as some conspiracies state, directly) involved in propagation of viruses.

Greshams Law is a real thing (ie. bad money gets spent first, good money is hoarded).

Having said that I think a 'de minimis' exemption that allowed for some reasonable amount of tax-free spending of bitcoin could really drive retail transactions.

There is lots of "trapped value" in BTC right now and holders don't want to incur both the tax liability combined with not wanting to spend their treasure. If the tax liability part was eased, it might be enough to induce flows....

Well smaller local LLMs are getting much better as well. Frankly my use of SOTA models has dropped off over last 3 months, I get lots of work out of qwen3-coder-next and now qwen3.6 / gemma4

I don't have enough local horsepower to run Minimax-2.7 or Kimi-2.5 but I could basically see ditching Cursor entirely very soon and using MM or Kimi to write detailed plans, and then pass off to local qwen to implement.

I don't think SOTA models will ever go away, but at some point local LLMs are going to become "good enough" to seriously curtail their usage.

I would posit that you are seeing something different than it first appears. The rise of the administrative state neccesitated this change in tempo.

For the past 40 or so years, Lawmakers have abdicated their legilative powers to newly created "Agencies" and imbue them with powers to "regulate" things - all done with no specific laws. Just a blanket "The Secretary of Agency XXX shall determine ....."

Because of this development now there is much more cost to the traditional court structure...if the court does nothing the new agency can do 10, 20, 30 years of damage before the whole thing is decided that its probably unconstitutional. This presents a real challenge.

In the end, its obvious why lawmakers prefer this arrangement. Your local senator is off the hook for everything, he/she can simply decry "the process" and "Washington DC" when the over-reach happens.....and there name isn't really attached.

In the end this is just another sign of the collapse of the republic and the likely outcome of super-charged executive branch taking control of everything dictator style

I think most of those guys are simply going to wind up as pay-pigs. My thoughts on this are a bit sprawling in that maybe there are some superficial cultural differences at play, but in the end I don't really believe that the fundamental nature of women at a biological level changes that much....these guys are simply in new "financial arrangements" its just pay-to-play at a more affordable level.

Its really no different than a thief jiggling door knobs. He can't just claim "the door was open so I took it"....

True, but it is very bitcoin positive!

"Mythos Hype" has been one of the better marketing initiatives I've seen recently. Same playbook at Sam Altmans ole "our tech is going to cause massive unemployment and may kill everyone". Anthropic just did a more targeted marketing campaign specifically aimed at boomer ceos.

Next Dem admin will do the same and it will accelerate. Pardons will be granted not only to immediate staff but to anyone (ie. brownshirts) who enforce admins edicts.

We are early stages of collapse of Republic.

Anyone who says it's morally wrong to have kids -- tell them it's morally wrong for them to accept social security if they don't have kids.

Yes, kids were the original Social Security. 4 or 5 kids can care for two aging parents (esp if mom and dad have little / no debt).

The collapse of family sizes (was that natural or environmentally induced?) dovetails completely with the rise of the social security state.

Restricting voting to actual citizens and ending the whole "mail in ballots" facade would be good in general, but I don't really think thats enough.

I think Trump voters are now split into 3 camps: (a) See this as a disaster, sizable portion will sit out election, (b) Will actively vote democrat, (c) MAGA truth social hardcores will still vote R, but numbers aren't enough.