Google researchers have sounded the alarm over the growing threat that future quantum computers pose to the security systems protecting Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies, saying that the crypto industry needs to start preparing now. In a blog post and accompanying white paper published this week, Google’s research team warned that the computing power required to break the encryption safeguarding crypto wallets and transactions may be significantly lower than experts had previously believed. Google, however, clarified that while no such machine is capable of doing this exists today, the threat is real as future quantum computers may.“Google has led the responsible transition to post-quantum cryptography since 2016. In a new whitepaper, we show that future quantum computers may break the elliptic curve cryptography that protects cryptocurrency and other systems with fewer qubits and gates than previously realized. We want to raise awareness on this issue and are providing the cryptocurrency community with recommendations to improve security and stability before this is possible, including transitioning blockchains to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which is resistant to quantum attacks,” the company said in a blog post.

What exactly is the risk

At the heart of the concern is a type of encryption called elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC), which is considered to be the mathematical backbone used to secure most crypto transactions. According to Google’s latest research, a future quantum computer could crack a key part of this system, known as ECDLP-256, using roughly 20 times less hardware than earlier estimates had assumed.Consider ECC as a digital lock that is so powerful that it needs much resources to crack it open. Quantum Computing offers a way to crack things that are not been possible with the current systems, like accelerating drug discovery, advancing material science (batteries). Similarly, quantum computers can provide an easy way to break crypto security with lower resources than previously thought.

What it means for crypto holders

Should crypto holders panic? Not yet but Google says they should pay attention. Google is clear that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not suddenly vulnerable, and the researchers framed their paper as a warning, giving the industry time to respond. Still, the researchers struck a cautious tone, noting that the window to act is “increasingly narrow” and that the pace of technological progress means developers, exchanges, and wallet providers need to move faster.Google is also pointing to a newer form of security called post-quantum cryptography (PQC) – encryption systems specifically designed to hold up against the power of quantum machines.“We urge all vulnerable cryptocurrency communities to join the migration to PQC without delay,” the researchers wrote. They also added the the US government has also been apprised of this.“To share this research responsibly, we engaged with the U.S. government and developed a new method to describe these vulnerabilities via a zero-knowledge proof, so they can be verified without providing a roadmap for bad actors. We urge other research teams to do the same to keep people safe. We look forward to continuing our work across the industry following our 2029 timeline alongside others working on responsible approaches, like Coinbase, the Stanford Institute for Blockchain Research, and the Ethereum Foundation,” Google added.

Mercado Coin Is Being Discontinued

The company notified users through the Mercado Pago digital wallet app and email. No public statement was issued. Mercado Libre introduced mercado coin in August 2022, starting in Brazil. The token was built as an ERC-20 asset on the Ethereum blockchain in partnership with crypto exchange Ripio and initially priced at roughly $0.10 per token.

Users earned it as cashback on purchases through Mercado Libre’s marketplace and could either spend mercado coin on the platform or cash it out. The intent was to bring everyday shoppers into the crypto space through a low-friction loyalty mechanism, no need to trade bitcoin or manage volatile assets. In practice, the token stayed inside the Mercado Libre ecosystem and never built meaningful traction elsewhere.

Starting April 17, users can no longer buy, sell, or earn mercado coin through the platform. Holders have three options before the deadline: sell tokens through the Mercado Pago app, spend the balance on Mercado Libre purchases, or do nothing. Any remaining balance after April 17 will be automatically converted to local fiat currency, Brazilian reais for most users, and deposited into their Mercado Pago account.

Mercado Libre gave no explanation in its user notifications for ending the program. The decision fits a pattern seen across large tech and e-commerce companies that built branded tokens during the 2021–2022 crypto expansion cycle. Many are stepping back from proprietary digital assets while keeping or expanding exposure to more established infrastructure like stablecoins and direct crypto trading.

Mercado Libre is not stepping away from crypto entirely. The company continues to offer crypto buying and selling, stablecoin transfers, and other digital asset services through Mercado Pago. It also launched its own dollar-backed stablecoin.

On the treasury side, Mercado Libre holds more than $38 million in bitcoin. The company first disclosed a $7.8 million BTC purchase in 2021 and held 570.4 BTC as of 2025 disclosures. For the roughly 2 million users who held mercado coin at various points, the shutdown carries little practical disruption.

The token had no active secondary market and no meaningful external liquidity. The auto-conversion safety net means holders do not need to take action to recover value. The shutdown reflects a clearer strategic direction for Mercado Libre’s fintech arm: move away from proprietary engagement tokens and focus on payment rails, stablecoins, and crypto custody that serve users across Latin America at scale.

Mercado Pago processes payments for hundreds of millions of users across the region. The company’s decision to retire a niche loyalty token while keeping broader crypto services active suggests the experiment was always peripheral to its core fintech build-out.

Mercado coin’s shutdown closes a chapter on one of Latin America’s more prominent corporate crypto loyalty programs, one that launched with regional ambitions but ended quietly with an auto-convert notice in a wallet app.

FAQ 🔎

• What is mercado coin? Mercado coin was an ERC-20 loyalty token launched by Mercado Libre in Brazil in August 2022 that let users earn cashback on purchases through the Mercado Libre marketplace.
• When does mercado coin shut down? Mercado coin will no longer be available to buy, sell, or earn starting April 17, 2026.
• What happens to remaining mercado coin balances after the shutdown? Any mercado coin balance not spent or sold by April 17, 2026 will be automatically converted to local fiat currency and deposited into the user’s Mercado Pago account.
• Is Mercado Libre leaving the crypto market? No — Mercado Libre continues to offer crypto trading, stablecoin services, and holds over $38 million in bitcoin on its balance sheet.

In early March, the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan made a bold move, announcing that it was preparing to take the European Union to court. A few days earlier, the bloc had threatened to ban exports of sensitive dual-use goods to Kyrgyzstan in order to prevent their reexport to Russia—a proposal that enraged Kyrgyz officials, who fear that could harm their country’s reputation as Central Asia’s most law-abiding, Western-friendly state. The EU’s concerns about covert shipments of dual-use goods to Russia from Kyrgyzstan are valid, but they may well obscure an even larger issue. Over the past year, Moscow has developed a crypto-based sanctions-evading channel powered by the Russian fintech company A7 and the ruble-linked cryptocurrency A7A5. Part of these flows are routed through Kyrgyzstan.

Western sanctions cut off their targets from global finance, including the SWIFT messaging network, cross-border correspondent banking relationships, and clearing mechanisms for dollar payments. For sanctioned economies, the workaround is obvious: developing Western-proof financial channels. This is what the Kremlin set out to do in late 2024, when it supported the creation of A7, a Moscow-based start-up that specializes in cryptocurrencies. The firm looks innocuous on paper, but scratch beneath the surface, and the Kremlin’s fingerprints appear everywhere. Fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor founded A7 after Russia granted him citizenship. The state-owned bank Promsvyazbank, which serves Russian defense firms, controls 49 percent of A7. To underline the Kremlin’s interest in the venture, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of A7’s Vladivostok branch in September 2025.

In early March, the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan made a bold move, announcing that it was preparing to take the European Union to court. A few days earlier, the bloc had threatened to ban exports of sensitive dual-use goods to Kyrgyzstan in order to prevent their reexport to Russia—a proposal that enraged Kyrgyz officials, who fear that could harm their country’s reputation as Central Asia’s most law-abiding, Western-friendly state. The EU’s concerns about covert shipments of dual-use goods to Russia from Kyrgyzstan are valid, but they may well obscure an even larger issue. Over the past year, Moscow has developed a crypto-based sanctions-evading channel powered by the Russian fintech company A7 and the ruble-linked cryptocurrency A7A5. Part of these flows are routed through Kyrgyzstan.

Western sanctions cut off their targets from global finance, including the SWIFT messaging network, cross-border correspondent banking relationships, and clearing mechanisms for dollar payments. For sanctioned economies, the workaround is obvious: developing Western-proof financial channels. This is what the Kremlin set out to do in late 2024, when it supported the creation of A7, a Moscow-based start-up that specializes in cryptocurrencies. The firm looks innocuous on paper, but scratch beneath the surface, and the Kremlin’s fingerprints appear everywhere. Fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor founded A7 after Russia granted him citizenship. The state-owned bank Promsvyazbank, which serves Russian defense firms, controls 49 percent of A7. To underline the Kremlin’s interest in the venture, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of A7’s Vladivostok branch in September 2025.

A7 offers access to a unique product: A7A5, a cryptocurrency issued by the obscure Kyrgyz firm Old Vector and regulated by Kyrgyz financial rules. It is also backed by Promsvyazbank’s deposits. Three features of A7A5 make it clear that its creators designed it for sanctions evasion at an industrial scale. First, the Promsvyazbank backing ensures virtually unlimited liquidity. Second, Russian firms can convert rubles into A7A5, circumventing the restrictions on ruble payments and Russian-held accounts implemented by all major cryptocurrency exchanges since 2022. Third, A7A5 holders can use the platform’s instant swap service to convert their coins into mainstream, dollar-pegged stablecoins, such as tether. Conveniently, the service lacks know-your-customer (KYC) processes to verify identities, hindering efforts to attribute transactions to sanctioned Russian firms.

This anonymity may sound counterintuitive, since the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies relies on public ledgers. However, “public” does not mean “identified.” The ledger records transfers between wallet addresses, not identifiable individuals or firms—like a highway where every car is visible but none has a license plate identifying its owner. The fact that A7A5’s crypto-to-stablecoin swap service has no KYC processes further reinforces anonymity. While Western security services can monitor A7A5 transactions in real time, connecting a wallet to a sanctioned Russian firm is a more difficult undertaking. Attribution requires names, documents, or intercepted communications, which the entire A7A5 architecture is designed to deny.

Experts estimate that A7A5 turnover stood at around $72 billion–$93 billion in 2025, a range that is equivalent to as much as one-third of Russia’s entire imports bill. Meanwhile, A7 processed some $39 billion in transactions linked to sanctions evasion, a figure roughly equivalent to Russia’s prewar annual import bill for high-tech—and often dual-use—goods. The list of cryptocurrency addresses doing business with A7 reads like a who’s who of sanctions evasion networks. Many of the addresses are tied to Chinese, Southeast Asian, and South African firms that procure sensitive electronic goods, dual-use equipment, and shipping services that Moscow can use for its war effort. TRM Labs, which specializes in blockchain investigations, has also tied A7-linked addresses to U.S.- and European Union-designated terrorist groups such as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hamas.

Western policymakers have no simple solution for curbing crypto-enabled sanctions evasion. For starters, consider the obvious issue: A7, Promsvyazbank, and Old Vector are all under U.S. sanctions, meaning they already operate outside Western financial channels and their owners have nothing to lose. Moreover, addressing sanctions evasion often resembles a game of whack-a-mole: Designate an entity, and it will soon reopen under a different name. Garantex, a Russian crypto exchange that specialized in money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing, illustrates this challenge. Washington sanctioned Garantex in 2022, yet the exchange still operated for three more years. After a joint U.S.-EU law enforcement operation seized the firm’s domains and servers in Germany and Finland in 2025, five other exchanges replaced Garantex within weeks.

Western policymakers also face a tricky political environment domestically. In the United States, President Donald Trump, his family, and some of his business partners have embraced cryptocurrencies with gusto. He has launched his own memecoin, embraced dollar-backed stablecoins that networks such as A7 plug into, and pushed for financial deregulation. Just a few weeks after A7 fell under U.S. sanctions, Donald Trump Jr. was a VIP speaker at the Token2049 cryptocurrency conference in Singapore, where A7A5 was a platinum sponsor. A7A5 abruptly disappeared from the program after Reuters sent a request for comment to the organizers.

Meanwhile, European policymakers also know that there is little they can do about Russia’s cryptocurrency activities. MiCA, the EU’s cryptocurrency regulation, only applies to EU-based exchanges. Therefore, the legislation cannot reach networks operating entirely outside European jurisdiction, such as A7/A7A5 or even tether. Implementing new sanctions on Russia-enabled cryptocurrencies would also be easier said than done. The bloc had planned an EU-wide ban on all crypto transactions with Russia-based counterparties in its 20th sanctions package, but Hungary’s and Slovakia’s vetoes over energy measures have put the new package in limbo.

Not all is lost, though. EU policymakers still have options to curb the rise of cryptocurrencies designed for illicit activities, such as A7A5. One option would be to collaborate with the United States to pressure issuers of dollar-pegged stablecoins to implement robust KYC checks. The goal would be to prevent anonymous A7A5 holders from converting their assets into mainstream stablecoins. With Trump in the White House, however, this is probably a steep ask—but it remains worth a try. Alternatively, the EU could pressure A7A5’s weak points over which the bloc has leverage—its dependence on Kyrgyzstan—to disrupt the network’s operations. Threatening to ban the export of EU-made dual-use products to Kyrgyzstan could be a useful stick in such discussions.

Moscow’s newfound interest in cryptocurrencies is not an outlier. Tehran has offered to accept cryptocurrency payments for its drone and missile sales, and Pyongyang steals cryptocurrency to boost its revenues. Together, these developments raise the question of how effective sanctions are against the growth of financial networks that the U.S. deregulation drive is helping to build. The Western sanctions toolbox was designed for a world of banks and wire transfers, not one in which cryptocurrencies can be exchanged for dollars in seconds—no questions asked. With A7A5, Moscow has provided a proof of concept. It’s likely only a matter of time before other sanctioned regimes follow in its footsteps.