Cramer's Bitcoin Sell Call Sparks Contrarian Buying Spree
CNBC host Jim Cramer has announced that he will sell his Bitcoin (BTC) due to concerns over quantum computing. He made this statement after IBM's chief executive, Arvind Krishna, warned that quantum computers could potentially break the cryptography protecting crypto holdings within three or four years.
However, it is unclear whether Cramer has actually sold his Bitcoin, as he has not confirmed a completed sale, disclosed a position size, or published a wallet address. Despite this, traders responded to the announcement by treating it as a contrarian signal and buying into the asset instead of selling.
A study on the inverse Cramer trade found that following TV stock pickers can lead to losses, with an ETF tracking the inverse Cramer position losing 15.7% while the S&P 500 gained 25.4%. This suggests that traders may be better off fading the overnight retail pop rather than inverting Cramer's opinion.
The IBM-University of Chicago study behind Krishna's warning showed a statistical floor on how faithfully a 70 qubit circuit executed, but did not prove the correctness of an answer. Breaking secp256k1, the curve securing Bitcoin keys, would require a far larger machine with 1,200 to 1,450 logical qubits and 70 million to 90 million Toffoli gates.