What if a quantum computer breaks RSA-2048 encryption?
A public RSA-2048 quantum break is a systemic-confidence shock — the first move is a security/crypto-migration panic, but the modeled long-end Treasury selloff plus gold and BTC bid as 'non-sovereign hedges' is a defensible reserve-confidence read. No clean analogue exists; the 1971 Nixon Shock rhyme captures a sudden monetary-trust break. Skeptic's note: post-quantum crypto migration is the real-economy response, and bonds may rally on flight-to-safety rather than sell.
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 risk-off shock. A demonstrated quantum factoring of RSA-2048 instantly imperils banking, VPN, and TLS encryption worldwide. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Dollar/reserve confidence ▼ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.