What if a quantum computer cracks RSA-2048 encryption?
A working RSA-2048-breaking quantum machine is a crypto-confidence kill-shot before it touches TradFi: short ETH/SOL and levered proxies (MSTR, COIN) hardest, since their security model is the thing impugned, while Bitcoin's UTXO set is partially defendable via address hygiene. The structural analogue is Mt. Gox (Feb-2014) — a trust-collapse that halved confidence overnight regardless of fundamentals. Forward angle: unlike Gox, post-quantum migration is a known roadmap, so the panic is front-loaded and a quantum-resistant-chain rotation, not a uniform crypto bid-down, is the real second move.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 3–10 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A lab demonstrates a quantum computer breaking RSA-2048, shattering financial encryption and triggering emergency crypto-migration panic. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Crypto confidence ▼ · Financial conditions ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.