O’Leary is leery that the looming threat of quantum computing will be a major overhang on Bitcoin’s price performance. Even though he affirmed Bitcoin “will” reach $1 million, that’s conditional on whether “it can resolve the doubt creeping in around quantum computing breaking the algorithms and the chain and the encryption.”
Concerns over supercomputers hacking into Bitcoin aren’t new, but they gained extra attention in 2026 with Google’s alarming whitepaper. Researchers at the tech giant claimed “future quantum computers may break the elliptic curve cryptography that protects cryptocurrency and other systems with fewer qubits and gates than previously realized,” further urging widespread adoption of post-quantum cryptography by 2029.
But even with these quantum computing concerns, O’Leary isn’t sitting on the sidelines. In another interview with The Block, O’Leary made it clear that he’s “back in the saddle buying new positions, putting my bets on for this next cycle.” He also predicted Bitcoin to account for anywhere between 1% and 3% of alternative asset allocations as more investors treat it as digital gold.
These bullish vibes are quite a change from O’Leary’s prior stance on digital assets. Back in 2019, O’Leary roasted Bitcoin on CNBC, calling it a “useless currency” and “garbage.”
Is crypto an S&P sector?
What’s really got O’Leary pumped about crypto’s future is its potential to become the infrastructure for trading every conceivable asset. O’Leary explained his reasoning to The Rollup, saying, “The way I view this whole digitization of the economy…is that this sector — if you want to call crypto or digitization a sector — will become the 12th sector of the S&P because it services all 11 other sectors.”
Plenty of other investors and banks are equally excited about bringing more assets on blockchains through the process of “tokenization.” For instance, a recent Citi report suggested the total market for tokenization will explode from today’s $17 billion to a base case of $5.5 trillion by 2030.
When asked what it would take for O’Leary to bet even more money on crypto, he had a simple response: “Use case adoption.” In particular, O’Leary is waiting for the first major stock exchange to link with a blockchain.
As he told The Rollup, “If you told me an exchange adopted one of these chains, I’d be all over that. The values of those tokens would go through the roof because that is going to be the platform by which tokenization is supported on that exchange. That’s the next big thing.”
But O’Leary isn’t so sure who will be first to integrate with these storied trading institutions. The only thing he felt confident predicting was that it’s less likely to be the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum.
The Bitcoin bulls are back
After languishing for months in the $60K range, Bitcoin rebounded sharply this August following the U.S. Treasury’s bond buyback program and President Trump’s pro-crypto press conference.
