1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:04,720 All of our systems, every single one of them, is at risk when 2 00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:12,400 we're in a post quantum world. Most of the classical 3 00:00:12,400 --> 00:00:17,040 cryptography community that deals with certification and key 4 00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:21,600 exchange protocols knows this very well, has been working on 5 00:00:21,600 --> 00:00:24,240 this for years. They already have protocols that 6 00:00:24,240 --> 00:00:27,520 they could use if quantum happen tomorrow. 7 00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:33,160 Unlike the foundations and communities that govern most of 8 00:00:33,160 --> 00:00:37,200 the crypto infrastructure, the Bitcoin community is fairly 9 00:00:37,200 --> 00:00:41,600 fragmented and a lot of the big voices are very opinionated. 10 00:00:41,720 --> 00:00:45,360 And so they're the cultural elements is the more I think 11 00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:48,400 important factor in the theorem. It's a technical element that 12 00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:51,120 really makes a big difference. There's so much stack to change. 13 00:00:51,120 --> 00:00:52,840 So you put it all together in these Rd. 14 00:00:52,840 --> 00:00:57,240 Maps seem to be converging somewhere around 2030, where 15 00:00:57,240 --> 00:01:00,880 we're going to have enough logical qubits in play to 16 00:01:00,960 --> 00:01:10,380 threaten our elliptic curve. Welcome to Epicenter, the show 17 00:01:10,380 --> 00:01:12,100 which talks about the technologies, projects and 18 00:01:12,100 --> 00:01:14,740 people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution. 19 00:01:14,740 --> 00:01:17,140 I'm Sebastien Quito and I'm joined by my Co host Brian 20 00:01:17,140 --> 00:01:18,660 Crane. So today we're speaking with 21 00:01:18,660 --> 00:01:21,700 John Lulick. He's an OG in Ethereum space, 22 00:01:21,700 --> 00:01:26,660 been around for over 10 years. He's previously a consensus, was 23 00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:31,760 part of Polygon and has been talking to Brian and I about 24 00:01:32,160 --> 00:01:35,720 about quantum cryptography and crypto for a little while now. 25 00:01:36,120 --> 00:01:39,960 And so we wanted to get him on on the show to discuss, you 26 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:43,240 know, his thesis for for quantum and how it it could impact the 27 00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:46,480 crypto industry. And then we'll also have Stefano 28 00:01:46,480 --> 00:01:49,880 Gogiozo, who's a researcher in quantum cryptography. 29 00:01:49,920 --> 00:01:52,520 He's a department lecturer at Oxford and he's the Co founder 30 00:01:52,520 --> 00:01:53,920 of Neville local. They're a company that are 31 00:01:53,920 --> 00:01:56,480 accelerating real world applications in quantum 32 00:01:56,480 --> 00:01:58,160 computing. Hey guys, Thanks for joining us. 33 00:01:58,360 --> 00:02:00,080 Hello, hello, hello. Great to see you. 34 00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:01,360 Guys, yes, pleasure to be here so. 35 00:02:01,360 --> 00:02:04,880 Before we get into the nitty gritty about quantum computing 36 00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:08,240 and how to fix crypto, because I mean, it is a really super 37 00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:10,759 complex topic. And I think like we all have a 38 00:02:10,759 --> 00:02:14,160 little bit of a grasp about like what it is and how it works. 39 00:02:14,160 --> 00:02:17,560 But it's, I think, you know, for myself and a lot of people, like 40 00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:21,080 super hard to kind of comprehend what quantum computing is and 41 00:02:21,080 --> 00:02:23,960 how different it is from your regular computing and what kind 42 00:02:23,960 --> 00:02:27,080 of applications do you have. But before that, this episode is 43 00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:29,880 brought to you by Gnosis Building the Open Internet one 44 00:02:29,880 --> 00:02:33,120 block at a time. Gnosis was founded in 2015 and 45 00:02:33,120 --> 00:02:35,920 it's grown from 1 of Ethereum's earliest projects into a 46 00:02:35,960 --> 00:02:38,680 powerful ecosystem for open user owned finance. 47 00:02:39,160 --> 00:02:42,120 Nosys is also the team behind products that had become core to 48 00:02:42,120 --> 00:02:45,680 my business and that are so many others like Safe and Cow Swap. 49 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:50,640 At the center is Nosys Chain. It's a low fee layer one with 0 50 00:02:50,640 --> 00:02:54,040 downtime in seven years and secured by over 300,000 51 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:56,280 validators. It's the foundation for real 52 00:02:56,280 --> 00:02:59,320 world financial applications like Nosys Pay and Circles. 53 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:03,240 All of this is governed by Nosys Dow, a community run 54 00:03:03,240 --> 00:03:07,120 organization where anyone with a GNO token can vote on updates, 55 00:03:07,320 --> 00:03:10,240 fund new projects, and even run a validator from home. 56 00:03:10,800 --> 00:03:13,760 So if you're building a Web 3 or you're just curious about what 57 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:17,680 financial freedom can look like, start exploring at nosis dot IO. 58 00:03:18,400 --> 00:03:20,480 You know, I want to ask you, John, what got you interested in 59 00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:24,400 quantum computing and what convinced you that this idea of 60 00:03:24,400 --> 00:03:27,480 quantum native finance is something that's interesting 61 00:03:27,560 --> 00:03:30,760 that we should be looking at, that's possibly investable today 62 00:03:31,040 --> 00:03:33,240 and that it's something that will last into the future? 63 00:03:33,240 --> 00:03:35,640 Yeah, no, no, great question. So, you know, it's kind of like, 64 00:03:35,640 --> 00:03:39,200 I mean, we've known each other a very long time and going back 65 00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:41,480 to, you know, the beginning of all this stuff, Ethereum and so 66 00:03:41,520 --> 00:03:43,160 on. And I remember many years ago, 67 00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:45,360 Brian and I were hanging out, I think we're in Germany with 68 00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:47,080 Carson Shtooker and a few other people. 69 00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:49,840 And we were talking about how amazing smart contracts are and 70 00:03:49,840 --> 00:03:51,760 like how everything's going to change, etcetera. 71 00:03:51,760 --> 00:03:54,200 And it was like very exciting and new. 72 00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:57,000 And we were just, I mean, just so happy to die to all this 73 00:03:57,000 --> 00:03:59,840 stuff, right? Fast forward to today, to some 74 00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:03,480 extent, I feel a little bit saturated, almost like, well, at 75 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:05,080 least in a theory. And what we're trying to do is 76 00:04:05,080 --> 00:04:07,120 just figure out how to re hypothecate things. 77 00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:10,240 And it's not nearly as cutting edge as it felt maybe, you know, 78 00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:14,040 7-8 years ago. And so last summer or last year, 79 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:17,040 I guess it was late summer, early fall, I met Stefano and 80 00:04:17,040 --> 00:04:19,200 his Co founder Fabrizio and I met a few others. 81 00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:22,120 I call it the special Venn diagram, these folks who are 82 00:04:22,120 --> 00:04:24,920 quantum physicists, computer engineers and crypto natives. 83 00:04:24,920 --> 00:04:29,000 And that's when I had like a mini panic attack, almost like a 84 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:32,800 existential breakdown moment, when in reality, you know, I 85 00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:35,520 learned that the quantum ecosystem is much more dynamic 86 00:04:35,520 --> 00:04:37,160 than I had realized up to that point. 87 00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:39,000 And I say this all the time. It used to be in the back of my 88 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:40,800 mind that it's, you know, 40 years away. 89 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:43,360 It's going to be this gigantic machine that looks like an alien 90 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:45,480 spaceship that Google builds with the NSA. 91 00:04:45,480 --> 00:04:47,040 And I don't need to worry about things. 92 00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:50,360 But in reality, again, if you look at the ecosystem, there's 93 00:04:50,480 --> 00:04:53,080 of course the big tech companies and Google and IBM and 94 00:04:53,080 --> 00:04:55,320 Microsoft, etcetera. But then you've got this 95 00:04:55,480 --> 00:04:57,440 tremendously dynamic mixed startup ecosystem. 96 00:04:57,440 --> 00:05:00,320 You've got, you know, Sai Quantum, you've got Ion Q, 97 00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:02,840 you've got so many of these innovative companies, Oxford 98 00:05:02,840 --> 00:05:07,120 Ionics, etcetera. And so you sort of then look at, 99 00:05:07,200 --> 00:05:09,480 let's say, the capital markets or the, you know, venture fund 100 00:05:09,480 --> 00:05:11,680 ecosystem and you've got the biggest sovereign wealth funds, 101 00:05:11,680 --> 00:05:14,120 the smartest capital who have for a very long time been 102 00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:17,720 investing in the space. You know, the UAE, for example, 103 00:05:17,720 --> 00:05:19,960 with their sovereign wealth fund has been investing in global 104 00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:22,720 foundries for a long time. And then you look at the policy 105 00:05:22,720 --> 00:05:26,240 side of it and it's kind of like you got top, let's say, policy 106 00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:29,760 makers, politicians, etcetera, in in top leadership positions, 107 00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:33,400 you know, like Governor Pritzer of Illinois shilling side 108 00:05:33,400 --> 00:05:35,720 quantum all the time. They're building this massive 109 00:05:35,720 --> 00:05:39,880 facility in Illinois and so on, you know, elected officials, 110 00:05:39,880 --> 00:05:41,800 government leaders all over the world and all the major 111 00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:43,440 companies. You look at what's going on in 112 00:05:43,440 --> 00:05:47,080 China, etcetera, and you start to realize that actually this is 113 00:05:47,080 --> 00:05:49,200 super dynamic. There's a ton of capital coming 114 00:05:49,200 --> 00:05:50,920 in. The regulatory and let's say 115 00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:54,040 government will is there. The private sector, both with 116 00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:57,240 big tech companies and with startups is extremely dynamic 117 00:05:57,240 --> 00:06:00,120 and moving very, very quickly. And the researchers are just 118 00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:01,640 tremendous. You meet some of these people 119 00:06:01,640 --> 00:06:04,840 and they're incredible people, very focused on this stuff. 120 00:06:04,880 --> 00:06:06,720 OK, So what does that mean for us? 121 00:06:06,720 --> 00:06:09,720 Well, like in my case and probably many others, you know, 122 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:12,400 watching this, I mean, to some extent or a large extent, our 123 00:06:12,400 --> 00:06:17,760 life kind of depends on ECDSA, you know, whether it's our asset 124 00:06:17,760 --> 00:06:21,200 base, our career, I mean, even just crypto being a part of your 125 00:06:21,200 --> 00:06:23,400 daily life that you enjoy, you know, participating in this 126 00:06:23,400 --> 00:06:25,960 ecosystem. And that, as it turns out, is a 127 00:06:25,960 --> 00:06:30,520 byproduct of it's a, it's a, it's a target of this like 128 00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:32,520 incredible ecosystem that's advancing. 129 00:06:32,880 --> 00:06:37,400 And I understand there's maybe contentious views on the actual 130 00:06:37,400 --> 00:06:41,640 utility of quantum computing, whether it's in material science 131 00:06:41,640 --> 00:06:44,520 or pharmacy or just making logistics better, etcetera. 132 00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:46,000 I don't think it's so contentious. 133 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:49,160 But in any case, it doesn't matter because our elliptic 134 00:06:49,160 --> 00:06:52,080 curve that secures everything. And what I mean by that is, you 135 00:06:52,080 --> 00:06:55,960 know, if you know my public key, well you, you're never going to 136 00:06:55,960 --> 00:06:58,800 guess my private key so long as I secure it properly. 137 00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:02,320 But with this technology emerging, then that becomes a 138 00:07:02,320 --> 00:07:04,360 very different, you know, reality, right? 139 00:07:04,360 --> 00:07:07,560 Which is to say, if you do know my public key, you can 140 00:07:07,560 --> 00:07:09,320 potentially crack my private key. 141 00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:13,480 And so putting it all together. And what I like to say also is 142 00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:14,720 you got to look at all the road maps. 143 00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:17,440 Because it is indeed true that the startups have a great 144 00:07:17,440 --> 00:07:20,240 incentive to say things that sound exciting 'cause they're 145 00:07:20,240 --> 00:07:22,680 constantly raising money. But I don't think DARPA has that 146 00:07:22,680 --> 00:07:26,560 incentive or TII, which is kind of like the NSA of the UAE. 147 00:07:27,320 --> 00:07:30,560 The SEC just put out a, a, a pretty significant bulletin. 148 00:07:31,360 --> 00:07:35,080 You look at, you know, BlackRock increasing or you know, 149 00:07:35,440 --> 00:07:39,160 substantially enhancing their quantum risk disclosure. 150 00:07:39,480 --> 00:07:42,440 I don't think Google or Microsoft has a has a reason to 151 00:07:42,440 --> 00:07:45,000 pump things unnecessarily, NVIDIA etcetera. 152 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:48,720 So you put it all together and these Rd. maps seem to be 153 00:07:48,720 --> 00:07:52,120 converging somewhere around 2030 where we're going to have enough 154 00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:56,720 logical qubits in play to threaten our elliptic curve. 155 00:07:57,600 --> 00:08:01,240 So that's kind of, yeah, the realization I had last last 156 00:08:01,240 --> 00:08:04,840 summer, last fall and Stefano and Fabrizio and every local 157 00:08:04,840 --> 00:08:07,000 really helped me understand a lot of things and and for that 158 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:08,120 I'm very grateful. Yeah. 159 00:08:08,160 --> 00:08:09,880 I mean, I'm, I'm a bit like you I guess. 160 00:08:09,880 --> 00:08:13,920 But I guess earlier in the in the exploration of this, I mean, 161 00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:16,960 I remember like just having some high level thing of like, oh, 162 00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:19,000 quantum computing could break cryptography. 163 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:21,880 And I remember actually, I think I bought some coin ones that was 164 00:08:21,880 --> 00:08:24,440 called quantum resistant Ledger. That was like, you know, 165 00:08:24,480 --> 00:08:27,240 probably like 6 or seven years ago because I was like, oh, 166 00:08:27,240 --> 00:08:30,720 that's and then never heard from it again until I think I really 167 00:08:30,720 --> 00:08:34,520 spoke with you. Maybe it's worth just explaining 168 00:08:34,679 --> 00:08:38,000 to people that risk very briefly, right? 169 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:41,919 So the risk of, you know, today, right, people are familiar, they 170 00:08:41,919 --> 00:08:45,200 have a seed phrase, right in many cases. 171 00:08:45,280 --> 00:08:48,800 And then the seed phrase, you can derive a private key from 172 00:08:48,800 --> 00:08:51,360 that. And then with the private key, 173 00:08:51,360 --> 00:08:54,760 right, you can sign a transaction and then the 174 00:08:54,760 --> 00:08:58,080 transaction basically is or the private key is associated with a 175 00:08:58,080 --> 00:09:00,760 public key. And then you can, you can let's 176 00:09:00,760 --> 00:09:03,360 say half sort of, you know, one big point associated with 177 00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:04,800 Republic key move to private key. 178 00:09:04,800 --> 00:09:07,240 You can sign that transaction, say, hey, I want to transfer 179 00:09:07,240 --> 00:09:10,000 that Bitcoin somewhere else. And then someone else can go and 180 00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:13,480 take that transaction and they can cryptographically verify 181 00:09:13,480 --> 00:09:16,160 that, OK, this is really that private key that's associated 182 00:09:16,160 --> 00:09:18,640 with that public key. And you know, that's, that's 183 00:09:18,640 --> 00:09:20,120 what the whole thing relies on, right? 184 00:09:20,120 --> 00:09:25,000 The whole crypto space. So can can you just explain how? 185 00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:27,800 How could quantum computing break this? 186 00:09:27,920 --> 00:09:31,440 Yeah, I mean, the the way I like to say it is OK, by the grace of 187 00:09:31,440 --> 00:09:33,640 God, if I'm lucky enough tomorrow morning to wake up, 188 00:09:33,640 --> 00:09:35,800 still be alive, two things will be true, right? 189 00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:39,120 The sun will be shining and my Bitcoin or my ETH or whatever 190 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:43,160 will be secure, provided that I manage the private key in like a 191 00:09:43,160 --> 00:09:46,280 safe fashion. And so for example, you get 192 00:09:46,280 --> 00:09:49,760 crypto steel, you put your seat phrase on something like that 193 00:09:49,760 --> 00:09:51,800 and you put that in an underground vault somewhere in 194 00:09:51,800 --> 00:09:54,760 Switzerland that you know is very hard to access. 195 00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:59,400 And you take safeguards to ensure that your private key or 196 00:09:59,400 --> 00:10:02,800 C phrase is never in any sort of digital form that can easily be 197 00:10:02,800 --> 00:10:05,040 stolen from you. Like, you know, people who have 198 00:10:05,040 --> 00:10:07,960 been the past put, I don't know these files in their e-mail, for 199 00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:09,840 example. So as long as you take those 200 00:10:09,920 --> 00:10:13,720 safeguards, then basically tomorrow morning when you wake 201 00:10:13,720 --> 00:10:15,880 up, your Bitcoin will still be there. 202 00:10:16,280 --> 00:10:20,160 However, and, and it'll be very, very, very hard for anyone to 203 00:10:20,480 --> 00:10:23,480 like determine your private key based on your public key, OK? 204 00:10:23,480 --> 00:10:25,760 Even if you take all the classical computing in the world 205 00:10:25,760 --> 00:10:27,840 today, you put it all together, it'll still take billions of 206 00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:29,520 years. And that is the thing that we 207 00:10:29,520 --> 00:10:33,080 rely on. OK, Now what we're talking about 208 00:10:33,080 --> 00:10:37,160 here is basically a massive threat to that security 209 00:10:37,160 --> 00:10:39,120 assumption. That gives us all comfort in the 210 00:10:39,120 --> 00:10:42,080 event that this ecosystem continues to develop to a point 211 00:10:42,080 --> 00:10:44,200 where we have sufficiently powerful enough quantum 212 00:10:44,200 --> 00:10:47,800 computers that can run certain types of algorithms wherein just 213 00:10:47,800 --> 00:10:51,120 with your public key in a very short period of time, maybe on 214 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:54,920 the order of hours or, you know, minutes or, you know, even less 215 00:10:54,920 --> 00:10:58,120 in the future, again, contingent upon this technology maturing. 216 00:10:58,120 --> 00:11:01,200 And this is like a hard problem. I'm not saying it's a piece of 217 00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:05,280 cake, but but if that state materializes, then you don't 218 00:11:05,280 --> 00:11:08,000 have that comfort anymore. Even if you take very strong 219 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:10,800 precautions to protect your private key, it can still be 220 00:11:10,800 --> 00:11:13,920 basically calculated by these computers and somebody or some 221 00:11:13,920 --> 00:11:17,880 malicious actor could then get your private key and move your 222 00:11:17,880 --> 00:11:20,600 Bitcoin or ETH or USDT or whatever. 223 00:11:20,600 --> 00:11:23,160 That's as usual, basically just brute force, right? 224 00:11:23,160 --> 00:11:27,280 You'd say like, hey, I'm gonna like get a transaction and then 225 00:11:27,280 --> 00:11:30,640 I'm gonna make up a random private key and I'm gonna create 226 00:11:30,680 --> 00:11:33,240 the sign, the transaction of it. I'm going to check. 227 00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:35,240 Does it verify? And then, well, it probably 228 00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:36,640 doesn't. So I'll try another one. 229 00:11:36,640 --> 00:11:39,120 I'll try another one. Now, normally with a normal 230 00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:42,680 computer this will take like forever, but with a quantum 231 00:11:42,680 --> 00:11:44,840 computer, you could do that fast. 232 00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:46,160 That's kind of the. Idea. 233 00:11:46,160 --> 00:11:51,400 Now that's the issue, correct? We are relying currently on 234 00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:55,760 primitives, cryptographic primitives that are susceptible 235 00:11:55,760 --> 00:11:58,800 to this type of computation, provided that you have a 236 00:11:58,800 --> 00:12:00,760 sufficiently powerful quantum computer. 237 00:12:00,760 --> 00:12:05,840 And that assumption is the thing that makes us all sleep at night 238 00:12:05,840 --> 00:12:09,400 and gives us the confidence to build a multi trillion dollar 239 00:12:09,400 --> 00:12:11,640 ecosystem. And if that confidence is shaken 240 00:12:11,840 --> 00:12:15,120 or threatened without, you know, us taking the kinds of measures 241 00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:17,960 that we need to take, then exactly what you described is 242 00:12:18,160 --> 00:12:20,160 the problem. So now I'd like to hand it over 243 00:12:20,160 --> 00:12:23,600 to Stefano and maybe let's get some clarity on quantum 244 00:12:23,600 --> 00:12:26,160 computing. What is quantum computing and 245 00:12:26,160 --> 00:12:29,800 how does it enable, you know, basically what John is is 246 00:12:29,800 --> 00:12:32,440 talking about, which is the ability to brute force a private 247 00:12:32,440 --> 00:12:35,080 key in a way that you can't do that with a regular computer. 248 00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:37,400 Yeah. So the the question about the 249 00:12:37,400 --> 00:12:41,960 nature of quantum computing itself is, is quite interesting. 250 00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:45,720 There is a sense in which physicists, fundamental 251 00:12:45,720 --> 00:12:50,640 physicists, would say quantum is the real way the universe 252 00:12:50,640 --> 00:12:53,480 computes. And it's just that our classical 253 00:12:53,480 --> 00:12:58,640 computing has been built upon an abstraction that is very stable. 254 00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:03,640 So we can have trillions, quadrillions of bits very 255 00:13:03,640 --> 00:13:06,160 cheaply. We can do trillions of 256 00:13:06,160 --> 00:13:09,800 computations per second in our large machines. 257 00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:12,960 And we do this with very little fault. 258 00:13:13,360 --> 00:13:15,960 There's few errors. Errors are very rare unless 259 00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:21,240 you're in hostile environment such as space or under certain 260 00:13:21,240 --> 00:13:25,240 sort of ruggedized conditions. But ordinarily our current 261 00:13:25,240 --> 00:13:30,400 civilization relies on the realization that if you engineer 262 00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:34,120 matter and electricity, so matter and energy to interact in 263 00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:37,040 a certain way, that it's very stable and it can be used to do 264 00:13:37,040 --> 00:13:38,680 a lot of things. That's great. 265 00:13:39,480 --> 00:13:43,040 Underneath it, though, the world, the rules of the universe 266 00:13:43,040 --> 00:13:46,320 are quantum. So quantum is the most 267 00:13:46,320 --> 00:13:49,800 successful physical theory we have, by far the most successful 268 00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:52,480 physical theory. It explains almost everything 269 00:13:52,480 --> 00:13:55,440 that we want to derive. It might be hard to write down 270 00:13:55,440 --> 00:13:58,400 exactly the explanation, but in principle people believe that up 271 00:13:58,400 --> 00:14:00,920 to some details it could be used to do so. 272 00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:04,960 So really, quantum computing is mostly an engineering effort. 273 00:14:04,960 --> 00:14:11,560 It's pushing our ability to make matter and energy, typically 274 00:14:11,560 --> 00:14:15,480 photons, but there is various ways to do this, do things for 275 00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:19,680 us. It's the original view by the 276 00:14:19,880 --> 00:14:24,640 early fathers of quantum mechanics was that really what 277 00:14:24,640 --> 00:14:29,680 quantum computing does is give us control over reality at its 278 00:14:29,680 --> 00:14:33,720 most fundamental level. So in that sense it's the most 279 00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:38,800 general description of quantum computing is you have very fine 280 00:14:38,800 --> 00:14:43,000 grain control over the way that nature works in some really 281 00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:46,720 small setting, some really low energy settings, superconducting 282 00:14:46,720 --> 00:14:50,360 circuit school, near absolute 0 individual atoms, individual 283 00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:54,800 photons, which enough precision that the noise doesn't run out 284 00:14:54,800 --> 00:14:56,720 the entire computation and makes it useless. 285 00:14:56,720 --> 00:14:59,960 Now what people did over the years, that was the original 286 00:14:59,960 --> 00:15:01,960 view of what quantum computing should do. 287 00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:05,600 And for many years, I think sixties, 70s, people just 288 00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:08,400 thought, OK, one day we might have control over nature and we 289 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:10,200 will. Do you know what physicists want 290 00:15:10,200 --> 00:15:12,160 to do? We will predict the outcomes of 291 00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:16,200 very complicated physical experiments without having to do 292 00:15:16,200 --> 00:15:19,720 them. In particular, we can understand 293 00:15:19,720 --> 00:15:22,960 chemistry and advanced materials, things that we can't 294 00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:24,720 simulate. And that some people came from 295 00:15:24,720 --> 00:15:28,000 maths and computer science and started realizing that really 296 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:32,720 some of those fundamental ways that matter evolves can be used 297 00:15:32,720 --> 00:15:35,360 to do some interesting computational tricks. 298 00:15:35,680 --> 00:15:38,400 One of the most famous ones is Shor's algorithm. 299 00:15:38,640 --> 00:15:43,880 Shor's algorithm does not really factor numbers in its entirety. 300 00:15:44,280 --> 00:15:48,360 There is a very specific sub problem of number factory. 301 00:15:48,360 --> 00:15:50,000 Number factoring is considered hard. 302 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:53,960 It's the basis of RSA, and one of its generalization is the 303 00:15:53,960 --> 00:15:55,680 basis of elliptic curve cryptography. 304 00:15:55,680 --> 00:15:57,320 Which ultimately brings us to crypto. 305 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:02,240 But really the observation by some very clever people is that 306 00:16:02,240 --> 00:16:05,480 there is a little core inside the problem. 307 00:16:05,480 --> 00:16:11,000 There's one sub routine which relies on a specific property of 308 00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:13,320 numbers, of national numbers, the way they multiply. 309 00:16:13,520 --> 00:16:17,640 And if you could do a certain kind of Fourier transforms, the 310 00:16:17,640 --> 00:16:22,000 same that we use to change and clean up signals. 311 00:16:22,040 --> 00:16:26,160 It's what this podcast will use to clear up our voice track. 312 00:16:26,160 --> 00:16:29,720 In the end, a very basic piece of technology, but if we can do 313 00:16:29,800 --> 00:16:33,680 some of it fast, exponentially faster, then we could factor 314 00:16:33,680 --> 00:16:35,880 numbers real easily. And it turns out that quantum 315 00:16:35,880 --> 00:16:37,440 computers are very good at doing that. 316 00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:40,280 It's part of the natural evolution of quantum systems. 317 00:16:40,280 --> 00:16:43,160 To be able to perform some of these transformations, you put 318 00:16:43,160 --> 00:16:46,240 them in the right configuration, and by themselves they would do 319 00:16:46,240 --> 00:16:47,840 it. As long as you can control the 320 00:16:47,840 --> 00:16:51,000 revolution without too much choice, then that's what the 321 00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:52,960 machine does. And this observation was then 322 00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:56,320 turned into a larger algorithm that can factor numbers, very 323 00:16:56,320 --> 00:16:57,920 large numbers with thousands of digits. 324 00:16:58,080 --> 00:17:01,320 That's Shor's algorithm, and then derived algorithms that 325 00:17:01,360 --> 00:17:04,240 actually factor points on elliptic curves, which are the 326 00:17:04,240 --> 00:17:06,280 algorithms that give us quantum risk today. 327 00:17:06,280 --> 00:17:09,079 So ultimately, like quantum computing is just about 328 00:17:09,079 --> 00:17:12,839 controlling physics, which is a fantastic endeavour in itself. 329 00:17:13,119 --> 00:17:17,200 One of the byproducts, and I think by far the least 330 00:17:17,200 --> 00:17:19,640 commercially interesting to these companies, they really 331 00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:21,760 don't. I mean they say they use it as a 332 00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:24,920 benchmark quantum computing manufacturers, but that's not 333 00:17:24,920 --> 00:17:27,319 really a product they will sell. They're not going to go and say 334 00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:29,360 here I'm going to factor some large numbers for you. 335 00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,680 They want to sell chemistry applications, materials 336 00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:35,600 applications, pharmaceuticals applications, optimization in 337 00:17:35,600 --> 00:17:37,760 some cases. But one of the byproducts that 338 00:17:37,760 --> 00:17:41,560 was discovered in the 90s is that indeed you can use it to 339 00:17:41,560 --> 00:17:45,080 break the primitives that we use for all of our cryptography 340 00:17:45,080 --> 00:17:46,640 today. And maybe we can go into the 341 00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:49,480 specifics of why this is relevant to crypto in in a 342 00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:52,120 follow up question. Yeah, yeah, we definitely want 343 00:17:52,120 --> 00:17:56,280 to go into that in in a bit. But I would love if you could 344 00:17:56,480 --> 00:18:00,280 expand a bit more on, you know, you mentioned like material 345 00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:02,960 chemical. I am like lots of different, 346 00:18:03,280 --> 00:18:06,600 like, let's say this quantum computing, you know, it comes 347 00:18:06,600 --> 00:18:09,800 about, what do you think the impact is going to be on the 348 00:18:09,800 --> 00:18:13,080 world? And you know, maybe in five 349 00:18:13,080 --> 00:18:17,320 years, 10 years, 20 years and, and on different, different 350 00:18:17,320 --> 00:18:21,080 areas of society, like how, how will normal people feel about 351 00:18:21,080 --> 00:18:24,120 the world so different now all of a sudden because like quantum 352 00:18:24,120 --> 00:18:26,800 has like just changed things. There are many fields. 353 00:18:27,720 --> 00:18:30,880 I think it's worth making a distinction between quantum 354 00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:34,040 computing, which today really means universal quantum 355 00:18:34,040 --> 00:18:39,920 computing, which is a huge multi like multi $100 billion field 356 00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:43,200 that has been developed for the past 10-15 years. 357 00:18:43,720 --> 00:18:47,200 And quantum cryptography, which is a younger field that is 358 00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:50,160 currently in its early phases, even though some of the 359 00:18:50,160 --> 00:18:53,360 companies have recently exited for a few 100 million valuation. 360 00:18:53,360 --> 00:18:56,320 So that's, that is already quite a lot of investment. 361 00:18:56,320 --> 00:18:59,880 But I would say in terms of what we could do there, it's we're 362 00:18:59,880 --> 00:19:02,120 still quite early on. So going to quantum computing, 363 00:19:02,120 --> 00:19:05,960 which is what most people talk about these days, there are 364 00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:11,360 maybe 3 or 4 major areas if applicability that would bring a 365 00:19:11,360 --> 00:19:15,080 direct impact on people's lives. It's not going to be in 20-30, 366 00:19:15,160 --> 00:19:19,000 it may be in 20352040. It really depends on how quickly 367 00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:20,480 they can reach the correct scale. 368 00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:24,560 They are applications. It used to be that they some of 369 00:19:24,560 --> 00:19:27,800 these companies sold applications in terms of 370 00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:30,800 enhancing AI and enhancing optimization. 371 00:19:30,800 --> 00:19:34,000 That was the big hype in like the early twenty 20s. 372 00:19:34,400 --> 00:19:38,720 That is no longer believed to be the primary revenue stream for 373 00:19:38,720 --> 00:19:42,520 many of these companies because optimization problems, to be 374 00:19:42,520 --> 00:19:44,920 competitive with current classical optimization 375 00:19:44,920 --> 00:19:49,200 techniques, require hundreds of thousands of cubits, logical 10s 376 00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:51,360 of thousands of logical cubits. The number of variables that 377 00:19:51,360 --> 00:19:55,800 you'd have in one of these problem solution techniques that 378 00:19:55,800 --> 00:19:58,320 we use today would have to map essentially to qubits. 379 00:19:58,600 --> 00:20:01,560 And that is that's a scaling that would take a while. 380 00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:06,840 In terms of AI, there used to be a speculative belief that there 381 00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:11,400 could be an advantage in using quantum systems for quantum AI, 382 00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:14,160 and that's been scaled back a couple of years ago. 383 00:20:14,240 --> 00:20:16,880 There's results that say that, yes, but mostly for physics 384 00:20:16,880 --> 00:20:18,760 problems, not for general purpose problems. 385 00:20:19,080 --> 00:20:21,520 And also we are literally in the AI boom. 386 00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:25,800 We have like trillion dollars in data centers being built on a 387 00:20:25,800 --> 00:20:29,680 weekly basis and it's very hard for quantum computing to compete 388 00:20:29,680 --> 00:20:31,720 with that in the short term. Maybe in the long term it will, 389 00:20:31,720 --> 00:20:33,280 but in the short term that's that's difficult. 390 00:20:33,320 --> 00:20:36,440 Where it really seems that quantum computing will have a 391 00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:40,360 direct immediate impact is applications where you are 392 00:20:40,360 --> 00:20:44,960 trying to simulate some complicated physical system that 393 00:20:44,960 --> 00:20:49,280 doesn't quite simplify well with existing techniques. 394 00:20:49,280 --> 00:20:53,000 So if you want to do material science today or advanced 395 00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:57,400 chemistry today on fairly large atoms or fairly large molecules, 396 00:20:57,680 --> 00:21:00,240 think nuclear chemistry. Nuclear chemistry involves 397 00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:02,720 really complicated atoms. They are very heavy. 398 00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:05,440 They have lots of electrons. They get to the point where the 399 00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:07,080 electrons behave relativistically. 400 00:21:07,080 --> 00:21:10,040 You need to take into account the fact that there's so much 401 00:21:10,040 --> 00:21:13,000 energy concentrated in the atom and they're so fast. 402 00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:17,840 The quantum computing revolution in that sector will be having 403 00:21:17,840 --> 00:21:21,560 machines that are are able to just reproduce a physical 404 00:21:21,560 --> 00:21:23,840 system. You make like a digital twin of 405 00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:27,960 a quantum system, and then you configure the machine to evolve 406 00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:32,160 the system like it would in real life under real conditions, more 407 00:21:32,160 --> 00:21:34,960 slowly, typically because you want to observe it or you want 408 00:21:34,960 --> 00:21:38,400 to ask certain questions about the evolution, like it's energy, 409 00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:41,680 like the strength of certain bonds, but you can reproduce. 410 00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:45,520 It's like a lab simulation, but it's a simulation that doesn't 411 00:21:45,520 --> 00:21:49,480 incur an exponential slowdown because it's made of the same 412 00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:53,840 matter The slowdown is there's a factor, of course it's slower 413 00:21:53,840 --> 00:21:55,760 because it's the machine you need to control it. 414 00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:58,320 It has fewer degrees of freedom, but it's not exponentially 415 00:21:58,320 --> 00:21:59,840 slower. And this is what it will really 416 00:21:59,840 --> 00:22:03,840 make a difference when you have large molecules and you want to 417 00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:07,680 study interesting quantum effects that make them activate 418 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:11,080 in an unexpected way, say metal organic frameworks in carbo 419 00:22:11,080 --> 00:22:12,840 capture. That was one of the early 420 00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:15,440 examples people wanted to study. That's something that quantum 421 00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:18,200 computers with sufficient degrees of freedom could do with 422 00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:19,600 it. And so that's where I think most 423 00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:22,480 of the money will go in the early days because they don't 424 00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:24,560 require 10s of thousands of logical qubits. 425 00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:28,080 Even if you have a few thousand good logical degrees of freedom, 426 00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:31,240 that is so much more than we can simulate with our classical 427 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:35,200 techniques that it will already enable us to do more chemistry, 428 00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:38,440 more materials, more, more medicine. 429 00:22:38,600 --> 00:22:41,480 So that's, I think that's what it will have the earliest 430 00:22:41,480 --> 00:22:43,960 impact, but it's not going to be something you're going to have 431 00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:47,520 on your desk anytime soon. Can you explain what is a qubit 432 00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:50,680 and a logical qubit? Think that distinction needs 433 00:22:50,800 --> 00:22:52,880 some clarity? Yeah, I think that's one of the 434 00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:57,480 big controversial points in in corporate announcements these 435 00:22:57,480 --> 00:23:00,200 days is the how many logical qubits do we have? 436 00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:04,200 There are obstructions maybe that it's worth starting with 437 00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:07,400 that there's no such thing as a qubit, but in there's no such 438 00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:09,840 thing as is a qubit in the same way as there is no such thing as 439 00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:12,200 a bit, right? There's not one bit. 440 00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,760 There are many technologies that when obstructed a certain way, 441 00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:17,760 give you something that behaves as a bit. 442 00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:20,800 Typically you need some some physical system that has two 443 00:23:20,800 --> 00:23:24,720 well defined States and you have to have some way of moving it 444 00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:27,360 between the states, putting many of the systems together and 445 00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:29,600 change them together. That's how bits work. 446 00:23:29,760 --> 00:23:33,440 Like you have many technologies that implement them and all you 447 00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:34,960 need are some basic requirements. 448 00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:37,680 Similarly a qubit is an abstraction. 449 00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:40,440 Quantum systems have a lot more degrees of freedom, but what you 450 00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:44,440 do is you take a system which has 2° of freedom, like 2 451 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:49,680 sufficiently separated energy levels or a photon that has like 452 00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:53,200 polarization in two orthogonal directions, something like that. 453 00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:58,320 And as long as you can modify those degrees of freedom in a 454 00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:01,160 practical way, and that's where all these technologies come into 455 00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,120 play, not everything is easy to change. 456 00:24:03,120 --> 00:24:05,840 Then you have a cubit, like a cubit is a physical system with 457 00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:09,840 two sufficiently well defined states which you can modify at a 458 00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:12,760 quantum level. So without making it collapse 459 00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,280 into one of the two states, but maintaining the all the various 460 00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:17,800 other states that are physically possible. 461 00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:19,560 They're called superpositions typically. 462 00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:22,760 So that's really the physical side of things. 463 00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:26,640 And I think most people in quantum computing or quantum 464 00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:31,080 information are happy to leave that to the hardware people. 465 00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:34,480 Like somebody comes up with a new idea for quantum hardware, 466 00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:38,960 the first thing they do is tell you how to build qubits and how 467 00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:41,320 to perform certain basic operations on qubits. 468 00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:44,440 And then everybody else uses that as the basic of structure 469 00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:48,000 layer and builds on top of it. So there is really like the 470 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:52,560 hardware people deal with making the like secret sauce, the basic 471 00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:54,920 building blocks. And then people build algorithms 472 00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,840 on top of that. But then there's the question of 473 00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:00,320 are these qubits sufficiently stable? 474 00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:03,240 Can you modify them without introducing too much noise, 475 00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:06,400 without losing too many of them? If their photos, photos are 476 00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:08,400 hard. I mean, photos are great because 477 00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:10,760 they travel for really long distances without interacting 478 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:13,600 with anything else, right? We have photos from 13 billion 479 00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:15,320 years ago. We have photos from the time of 480 00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:17,920 loss scattering in the universe. And we, we still see them as 481 00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:20,680 they were, but they're very hard to catch and they're very hard 482 00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:23,040 to do operations on because they travel very fast. 483 00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:25,920 And so every, there's always a challenge. 484 00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:29,480 All of these architectures are a compromise between how many 485 00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:32,240 operations you can do, what kind of error rate you get and, and 486 00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,520 so on. If you want to get from, you 487 00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:38,640 have your, let's say you have your Google chip, right? 488 00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:41,760 It has a bunch of qubits on it. The hardware people made them 489 00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:46,400 and there's maybe 100 or 200 of them, and they're very noisy, 490 00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:50,720 like the operations very quickly disturb them After a few dozen 491 00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:53,720 operations, you lose pretty much every information. 492 00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:56,280 After a few 100 operations or even a few thousand, that's not 493 00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:58,480 enough to do anything useful. And So what you do is you say, 494 00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:03,360 OK, can I take all of these like 100 qubits and take a slice 495 00:26:03,360 --> 00:26:05,720 across their space that's robust to noise. 496 00:26:06,240 --> 00:26:09,080 Like I create an error correction code, but a quantum 497 00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:10,760 1. So I don't just check for the 498 00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:12,760 errors. I really try to look at the 499 00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:16,320 whole space of these 100 qubits that has two to the 100 500 00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:17,880 dimensions. It's humongous. 501 00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:21,320 And I try to find a 2 dimensional slice, so a tiny, 502 00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:24,560 tiny slice which is really robust to noise, where I can 503 00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,160 easily correct errors. I can bring the states back to 504 00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:31,040 this lies very effectively. And this is the foundation of 505 00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:33,280 quantum error correction. And one of the key results in 506 00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:36,520 quantum error correction is that the moment that you hit a 507 00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:42,720 minimum threshold of accuracy, so you your operations go below 508 00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:46,240 a certain error rate, then error correction starts improving 509 00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:48,800 itself. So there is a point at which if 510 00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:52,200 your error is higher than this threshold, then the error 511 00:26:52,360 --> 00:26:55,600 correction procedure introduces more errors than it can correct, 512 00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:58,360 and so it will ultimately fail. And there's, if you're below 513 00:26:58,360 --> 00:27:01,480 this threshold, then the error correction will remove more 514 00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:03,200 errors than it itself introduces. 515 00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:06,760 And so you can just make your computation longer and correct 516 00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:09,160 errors forever. It's called the threshold 517 00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:10,920 theorem. And this is the basis really of 518 00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,120 quantum error correction. Now this is what Google trusted 519 00:27:13,120 --> 00:27:15,920 when they say that they almost got 1 logical qubit. 520 00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,920 What they mean is that they are close enough to the threshold 521 00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:25,200 with their hardware that soon, I mean a year, 2 years, but soon 522 00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:29,400 enough they will be able to perform correction faster than 523 00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:31,360 errors accumulate. But there are other ways of 524 00:27:31,360 --> 00:27:34,960 making these error correction codes, and some of them don't 525 00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:39,160 really correct all the errors. But maybe you have 30 physical 526 00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:42,280 qubits and you have a code that corrects 5 errors out of 30. 527 00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:45,960 That makes it look like you have 30 logical qubits or 25 logical 528 00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:47,440 qubits. But really you don't. 529 00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,280 Not in the same sense as the Google qubits too. 530 00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:53,440 And so there's a lot of subtleties in how people count 531 00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,200 this. The real question is ultimately, 532 00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:00,160 can you make these logical qubits, these sort of error 533 00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,520 corrected abstractions in such a way that they individually 534 00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:08,720 behave as single qubits would with no error or exponentially 535 00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:11,040 small errors. When the answer to that becomes 536 00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:14,840 yes, that's when you get the logical qubits that are 537 00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,880 considered in these Shor's algorithm estimates. 538 00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,000 So people say, how many logical qubits do I need to run Shor's 539 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:22,680 algorithm? The answer is typically a few 540 00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:25,560 thousand. And then you have to think, OK, 541 00:28:26,040 --> 00:28:29,800 a few 1000 logical qubits really mean a few hundreds of thousands 542 00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:33,240 if it's one to 100, a few million if it's one to 1000, 543 00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:34,480 really depends on the architecture. 544 00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:37,840 But you have to multiply by some large factor to estimate how 545 00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:40,880 many physical qubits these companies have to manufacture 546 00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,320 before they can run this kind of schemes. 547 00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:46,720 And then there are some additional improvements that 548 00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:49,520 people have made over time. You can connect smaller modules 549 00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:53,360 and the way that these qubits are put together can be made 550 00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:55,320 more performing than just building a large chip. 551 00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:58,760 All in all, the the strategy is always trying to figure out, can 552 00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:01,720 I build enough physical qubits such that they have a 553 00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:06,720 sufficiently low noise and I take enough of them together and 554 00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:09,280 I can collapse them into fewer logical qubits. 555 00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:10,320 But they're really, really good, yeah. 556 00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:14,040 This is one of the things I say for, you know, us regular kind 557 00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:17,320 of crypto ugents who are, you know, thinking about this stuff. 558 00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:21,160 There's certain checkpoints, things you look for, OK, error 559 00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:23,480 correction is one of them. The Google Willow news was 560 00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:25,240 really big. I don't know that everybody 561 00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:27,520 really understood it. Stefano explains her very 562 00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:30,000 elegantly. But when we get to that point, 563 00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:32,120 that is one of the key requirements. 564 00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:34,720 And I think it's going to be one of the massive accelerators of 565 00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:37,200 our ecosystem really waking up. I mean, it's a critical 566 00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:40,320 component and everybody's working on it, so. 567 00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:43,640 John, earlier, you know, we were talking about the, the state of 568 00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:45,480 quantum readiness in the crypto space. 569 00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,680 Like by your estimation, what does that look like? 570 00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:53,560 How many projects are taking quantum seriously in order to 571 00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,640 prevent some of these, these attack services that we, that 572 00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:00,080 we, that you described earlier? And yeah, what's your, what's 573 00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:03,200 your sense of, you know, how this, how this space is treating 574 00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,360 or addressing this issue? Well, let me preface by saying I 575 00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,640 have a tremendous amount of respect for all the researchers, 576 00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:11,200 Ethereum Foundation, Solana, everywhere near, etcetera. 577 00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:12,800 I think those are wonderful people. 578 00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:16,680 However, in my opinion, just my opinion, but I think we're in a 579 00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:21,840 woeful state and I'll give you some concrete examples on the 580 00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:24,840 Ethereum side, you know, the whole vertical program just got 581 00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:27,680 cancelled not too long ago. And actually Stefano and 582 00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:31,160 Fabrizio, Stefano's partner for many years was, you know, 583 00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:32,960 telling these guys, hey, you're going to have to redo the 584 00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:35,040 plumbing eventually. They figured it out. 585 00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:38,840 But you know, after however many years, however much money and 586 00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:41,320 more importantly, precious research, you know, researcher 587 00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:44,360 time. So even just getting blockchain 588 00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:47,320 networks and ecosystems to understand this risk, take it 589 00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:52,080 seriously and invest accordingly U to this point, I don't think 590 00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:56,200 that's happened to to sufficient scale, not even close. 591 00:30:56,720 --> 00:30:58,880 We are starting to see some early indications. 592 00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,720 Let me give you another sort of simple example, and this is just 593 00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:04,840 my, you know, dummy D Gen. math here. 594 00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:07,360 But let's say we have a $3 trillion ecosystem. 595 00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:11,160 Let's say you ascribe a 1% chance to, I don't know, the ion 596 00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:15,520 Q road map being accurate, which calls for 2500 logical qubits in 597 00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:18,280 2028. And let's assume that results in 598 00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:24,000 100% loss or close to it, OK, in terms of crypto market cap, 599 00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:27,200 because I think that if confidence is shaken in our 600 00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,400 elliptic curve, you know, capital is going to flee very 601 00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:33,880 quickly, OK? Rationally, you sort of take 3 602 00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:38,680 trillion * 1% * 100% loss. We should be spending 30 billion 603 00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:42,120 a year right now on this, OK? We're not spending anything. 604 00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:44,960 You look at, for example, Bitcoin and there's a guy named 605 00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:49,240 Hunter Beast, great guy of lot of respect for him and he's 606 00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:52,480 leading the BIP 360 initiative. And you know, a few other people 607 00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,920 as well in the mix, you look at a guy like Jameson Lopp. 608 00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:59,480 Jameson Lopp, I like to say is the most constructively correct 609 00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:01,600 Bitcoiner I know. I mean, he's technical, he's 610 00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:05,120 rigid, he focuses on security. I mean, he's a great Bitcoin 611 00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:08,200 ambassador and he's come out over the last few months, you 612 00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:11,320 know, at conferences and so on, surfacing the risk and I think 613 00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:14,200 talking about it in a very articulate and truthful manner. 614 00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:16,960 And you know, it's no his, it's no secret, right? 615 00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:19,520 I've had lots of fights with pixel Bitcoin maximalist over 616 00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:22,640 the years, but a lot of Bitcoin maximalists have turned into 617 00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:25,360 like fundamentalists where everything is a scam and they 618 00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:27,720 just reject everything. And I understand there's utility 619 00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,000 in that. I mean, it's it can be an 620 00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:32,040 important thing because, you know, you just sort of hold your 621 00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:35,640 Bitcoin and you don't get duped into like rug poles with all 622 00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:36,920 these other meme coins and so on. 623 00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:39,800 So I get that. But when you just outright 624 00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:43,720 reject everything, including like these technological like 625 00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,360 innovations where basically you call physicists and serious 626 00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:51,720 people grifters, what happens is it lowers the rating is 627 00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:55,480 potential for Bitcoin itself as a community to accept what's 628 00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,760 going on and take it seriously. And so, you know, there is a 629 00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:01,840 political or let's say, community based component to 630 00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:04,320 this because it's not like banks, Oregon financial 631 00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:07,680 institutions where I mean, they can upgrade in a much, let's 632 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:09,880 say, more simplified path because they don't have 633 00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:12,520 decentralization, they don't have coordination problems like 634 00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:16,320 we do or coordination costs. So even getting communities to 635 00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,080 wake up to this is, is hard and has been hard. 636 00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:21,400 There is some, let's say, progress recently. 637 00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:24,080 And then when you get even deeper into it and you sort of 638 00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,680 dig through all of their Rd. maps and implementations and 639 00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:29,920 current, you know, working groups and so on, there's very 640 00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,520 little, I have to give credit to the Ethereum Foundation that 641 00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:35,880 just had an event in Cambridge. I, I tweeted about it and stuff 642 00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:39,800 and it was really excellent. Vitalik, you know, is signalling 643 00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:42,440 their intention to be quantum ready. 644 00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:45,280 Justin Drake and some others, Antonio who leads the Ethereum 645 00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:47,720 Foundation as as their lead quantum researcher. 646 00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:51,040 Wonderful guy by the way. So there there's things 647 00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:54,240 happening there on the Solana side, as far as I understand. 648 00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,800 I talked to Matt Zorg, great guy, VP of technology. 649 00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:58,920 They're they're prioritizing BLS. 650 00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,440 My understanding the current state is very hard or not really 651 00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,760 knowing how to aggravate post quantum signatures, certainly 652 00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:08,719 not at the scale that they would need and BLS in any case would 653 00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:10,960 need to be redone. I can understand and why they're 654 00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:13,480 going in that direction now in terms of performance and 655 00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:16,880 obviously that's Solana's edge. But if you have to then redo the 656 00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:20,400 plumbing a couple few years from now and at the same time the 657 00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:23,080 point Stefano just made about error correction, we start to 658 00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:26,760 see these headlines coming in of like these, you know, tremendous 659 00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:29,280 innovations. You then have to pivot very 660 00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:31,760 quickly. And the problem there is you 661 00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,719 would have lost precious time. And you go down the line. 662 00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:39,000 And, you know, I mean, not to denigrate Justin Sun in any way 663 00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:40,560 or anything like that. I mean, I think he's a great 664 00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,000 businessman. But like, Tron isn't exactly a 665 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:45,000 bastion of technological innovation. 666 00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:47,600 Exactly. And yet it hosts, what, $100 667 00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:50,080 billion worth of stable coins and so on, right. 668 00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:54,760 So the problem is quite complex. You look at Etherium and this is 669 00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:59,160 the analog I like to use as far as our L2 ecosystem, you know, 670 00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:01,200 path. I mean, when when we launched 671 00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,280 Etherium, it was 1024 shards of the L1, we're going to have this 672 00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:06,840 world computer and so on. But the reality is that proved 673 00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:08,800 to be very hard. And then a couple few years 674 00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:11,440 later we get, you know, maybe 1 Shard and now this kind of like 675 00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,760 L2 ecosystem and so on. And even that's taken 7 or 8 676 00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:16,200 years. And there's a lot of controversy 677 00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:19,040 around how efficient, you know, that technological kind of 678 00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:21,680 delivery challenge has been executed against. 679 00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:23,440 OK. So this is hard. 680 00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:26,000 It's complex. It requires users to take 681 00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:27,840 action. It requires a lot of social 682 00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:30,080 coordination across multiple networks. 683 00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:31,720 And I say this, that we're all in it together. 684 00:35:31,720 --> 00:35:34,480 You look at Bitcoin, most Bitcoin price discovery is 685 00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:37,400 against stablecoin pairs. Like, not a lot of USD is 686 00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:40,400 actually traded against Bitcoin. Where do all those stablecoins 687 00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:41,680 live? They live on other networks. 688 00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:44,120 So it's all intertwined. And I think when you look at it 689 00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:48,480 in aggregate, you know, our ecosystem is just that the 690 00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:52,160 genesis of taking this seriously, woefully under 691 00:35:52,160 --> 00:35:55,480 invested in this space. And you know, half of the people 692 00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:57,880 in our communities think this is all a grift and a scam. 693 00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:02,680 So I'm not super optimistic at the moment to be perfectly 694 00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:04,840 honest with respect to our quantum readiness. 695 00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:07,800 So. Let's just, I mean this scenario 696 00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:09,560 we talked about beforehand, right? 697 00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:13,320 Where basically someone can calculate, you know, someone who 698 00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:16,520 doesn't have your private keys can create a transaction to 699 00:36:16,520 --> 00:36:20,840 basically move your bitcoins to somewhere else, right, to their 700 00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:24,400 own address. And now I mean that of course, I 701 00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:27,920 mean seems to I, I guess there would really be a kind of a flip 702 00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:32,000 right where like from one day to the next, basically the entire 703 00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,080 network becomes like untrustworthy, right? 704 00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:37,360 Because like someone could move all of like Satoshi's coins and 705 00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:41,120 your coins and my coin and why is anyone going to buy any 706 00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:43,640 Bitcoin then if they can just be taking in a way again, right? 707 00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:45,640 Like, of course, that also brings up the question, oh, 708 00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,440 like, how can you benefit from that as an attacker? 709 00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:51,320 Well, probably the best way would be just a short Bitcoin, 710 00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:53,480 right? If you could go like very short 711 00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,760 Bitcoin on some like traditional financial system options, short 712 00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:00,800 the ETF or something, I guess I don't know because like stealing 713 00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:02,320 the Bitcoin is kind of pointless now. 714 00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:07,640 Depends if you're caught. Right. 715 00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:11,480 It depends if you're caught. Right, If you of course, if 716 00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:15,880 you're early, right, like let's say you, you, you have the keys 717 00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,680 beforehand and you can steal some and you can sell it and you 718 00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:22,200 can do it before people realize what's going on. 719 00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:25,320 Then then maybe there's a high Yeah. 720 00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:27,480 And you could, you could probably do some sort of data 721 00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:29,520 analysis, right? That you're going to go try to 722 00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:35,520 steal some that people hopefully will not realize that there's 723 00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:37,080 because they're not paying attention. 724 00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:39,880 I mean, of course you get asked to Toshi's coin, although people 725 00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:43,600 will watch that. Yeah, I think that's that's what 726 00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:49,000 you say when. OK, I think John is is also sold 727 00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,560 on this scenario. You wouldn't move them 728 00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,920 immediately. You you do this in a secret way. 729 00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:57,880 You do it on coins that have not been moved for a while. 730 00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:02,400 Probably nobody would notice and it would be one of those news a 731 00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:05,560 whale finally decided to move their Bitcoin. 732 00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:07,320 Is it quantum? Is it not quantum? 733 00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:09,960 Do we know? I'm not sure people would 734 00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,080 immediately suspect it. And you could go on for quite a 735 00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:16,200 while and you could make quite a lot of money outside of the 736 00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:18,680 ecosystem in the meantime and then? 737 00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:21,040 You could really go with this, right? 738 00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:25,880 Because I mean, maybe you think no one is noticing, but then 739 00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:27,800 like, you don't really know, right? 740 00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:29,760 And then it's pretty quick. I mean it. 741 00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:32,440 Well, let me, let me, let me paint you another picture in 742 00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,040 terms of a state actor. And I wrote this article. 743 00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:37,760 It's an open letter to JD Bands. I'm sure he'll never see it. 744 00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:39,440 He was at the Bitcoin Vegas conference. 745 00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:42,400 He said, OK, putting Bitcoin into the US economy with all 746 00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:44,640 these ETFs and all these financial products is an 747 00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:46,800 advantage over China because they're not doing it. 748 00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:49,440 And China's never going to embrace Bitcoin and crypto 749 00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:51,480 because they're afraid of capital flight and they have 750 00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,560 these control mechanisms. OK, I accept that is generally 751 00:38:54,560 --> 00:38:56,760 true. However, if you accept the 752 00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:00,040 potential for let's say, another big pump in our ecosystem, we 753 00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:04,760 get to 10/15/20 trillion. Now there's so much, so many 754 00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:07,640 trillions leveraged into the US economy with Bitcoin as the 755 00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:09,680 underlying with all these stable coins, etcetera. 756 00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:12,520 For a state actor, Bitcoin becomes a military target. 757 00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:16,560 Now here's the thing, Bitcoin will not, in my opinion, warrant 758 00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:19,080 a military response or any kind of detente. 759 00:39:19,240 --> 00:39:21,880 OK, you don't send a nuke into the US 'cause you can be sure 760 00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:23,560 they're going to send 1000 back at you. 761 00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,440 So there's a detente and nuclear attacks don't happen for that 762 00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,560 reason. Bitcoin is not like the CIA, 763 00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:31,600 it's not the Federal Reserve, nobody owns it. 764 00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:34,920 And so it becomes the perfect military target in that 765 00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:37,040 scenario. As a state actor, what you're 766 00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:40,400 attempting to do is 'cause damage into your rival or 767 00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:43,920 adversaries economic system and if we have trillions leverage 768 00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:46,480 into our system and now Satoshi's coins. 769 00:39:46,720 --> 00:39:49,600 So this is an example of wanting to do a quantum attack, not 770 00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,320 necessarily to profit, but to cause maximum, let's say, 771 00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:56,080 cascading waves of liquidations and so on. 772 00:39:56,320 --> 00:39:58,200 And in order to cause economic damage. 773 00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:02,280 I can imagine a certain scenario where, you know, the PLA assigns 774 00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,120 their quantum cloud to the Lazarus Group, who obviously, 775 00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:09,240 you know, has been very adept at crypto hacks for a long time now 776 00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,040 for this purpose. Moreover, when you look at other 777 00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:14,320 networks, Etherium hosts all the stable coins. 778 00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:16,680 Excuse me, Etherium is a nonprofit foundation in 779 00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:19,040 Switzerland. OK, Switzerland is not going to 780 00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,720 go to war with China or North Korea or anybody else over an 781 00:40:21,720 --> 00:40:25,040 attack. To that kind of an entity, same 782 00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:27,480 thing with Solana and so many of these other things which are 783 00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,960 constructed as offshore nonprofit foundations, OK. 784 00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:37,080 There is no Detente element to, you know, basically preventing 785 00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:40,080 an adversary from causing economic damage as we continue 786 00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:41,800 to lever up the stuff into our economy. 787 00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:45,240 And no question, I think if the capability becomes available, 788 00:40:45,240 --> 00:40:49,200 people will use it, I mean for whatever motivations they have. 789 00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:53,360 But is there, I mean, what is the way to deal with this? 790 00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:59,000 Can you can you somehow upgrade let's say Bitcoin or Ethereum to 791 00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:01,480 prevent that risk? And how would? 792 00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:05,680 Some of it, some of it the the reality is that some of the risk 793 00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:09,680 comes from attacking addresses and getting, you know, 794 00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:13,680 compromising the part of the stack that's the cryptographic 795 00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:15,720 at the station. That's where you sign 796 00:41:15,720 --> 00:41:18,840 transactions. That's where you sign operations 797 00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:22,920 on smart contracts. That can be fixed because what's 798 00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:26,360 happened until now is recorded on the Ledger and as long as we 799 00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:30,360 switch to quantum resistant cryptography, we can prevent it 800 00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:34,320 from happening in the future. There are challenges there which 801 00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:37,120 we can discuss. It's not a straightforward as 802 00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:41,240 changing the public certification stack that we rely 803 00:41:41,240 --> 00:41:44,600 on for Internet or or any of our secure transactions. 804 00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:47,760 Although that's also non trivial, but people have talked 805 00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,840 more about it because. Crypto is like. 806 00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:54,560 No, sorry. Yes. 807 00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:58,160 Oh yeah, OK. This is not crypto. 808 00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:01,760 This is everything like you connect to a website, you use 809 00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:05,000 HTTPS. That's how these days you rely 810 00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:06,800 on the fact that there's not going to be somebody in the 811 00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,000 middle altering your transmission. 812 00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:12,600 Now once there's the initial phase really of the of the 813 00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:15,920 communication, which is where you establish A symmetric key, 814 00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:18,640 that is done by using certificates. 815 00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:22,200 So things that rely on public key cryptography that are 816 00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:25,080 quantum weak. If you get into that stage, then 817 00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,280 that's it. You can play like you can play 818 00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:30,800 replays, you can put yourself in the middle of a conversation and 819 00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:34,000 pretend to be both parts. You can do whatever you want. 820 00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:36,320 Our entire technology relies on this. 821 00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:40,160 Updates to Windows rely on this. Updates to anything actually 822 00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:43,000 rely on this. Signatures are like digital 823 00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:46,120 certificates and the chain of certifications that we have 824 00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:50,000 created are the basics for the entire world communication 825 00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,000 network. And so that's all week. 826 00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:54,840 So why are it's easy to think it's crypto? 827 00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:57,920 I mean, it's a when, when John and I were talking about this a 828 00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:00,760 couple of weeks ago, my argument was that like, you know, crypto 829 00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:05,280 in, in comparison to everything else that can be impacted by 830 00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:10,840 this is such a minuscule kind of part of the economy that that 831 00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:14,360 effects a minuscule portion of the population. 832 00:43:14,720 --> 00:43:18,560 When in reality, it's like all of our systems, every single one 833 00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:22,960 of them, is at risk. When, when when when A post 834 00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:23,960 quantum world? Yeah. 835 00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:27,040 But if you think about it from like let's say wealth 836 00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,520 perspective first of all, right. And I mean, I guess a lot of 837 00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:33,080 people here, probably a lot of people listening, right, they 838 00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:36,080 will have a lot, lot of their assets in in crypto. 839 00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:39,440 So if that just gets wiped out to zero, well, that's pretty 840 00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:42,560 significant event. It is pretty significant, but I 841 00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:46,280 mean, I got like chaos in the streets starts happening much 842 00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:50,440 earlier when like everyone's bank accounts don't work right 843 00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:54,680 Or like you see what I'm saying? Like, I mean, there's like much 844 00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:59,240 more visible kind of risks to the entire global economy with 845 00:43:59,240 --> 00:44:01,360 very little functions. For most people, if their coins 846 00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:03,880 are gone. Right, I think. 847 00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:07,480 But the reality is that there's really three, well, 2 main 848 00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:12,680 reasons why this is different. The main one, the really big 1, 849 00:44:12,720 --> 00:44:15,920 is a cultural one, or political I, I don't know how we want to 850 00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:19,160 call it, but let's say cultural. Most of the cryptography 851 00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:23,120 classical cryptography community that deals with certification 852 00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:28,800 and key exchange protocols knows this very well, has been working 853 00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:31,520 on this for years. They already have protocols that 854 00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:34,840 they could use. If Quantum happened tomorrow, 855 00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:38,040 they would be able to deploy the changes to the browsers. 856 00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:42,240 They're already experimental features of some of the major 857 00:44:42,240 --> 00:44:43,880 browsers. You can enable it yourself if 858 00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:46,640 you want to try it. They wouldn't incur a huge 859 00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:48,400 computational cost, blah blah blah blah blah. 860 00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:50,440 There's a lot of things that they've already done. 861 00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:56,120 Unlike the foundations and communities that govern most of 862 00:44:56,120 --> 00:44:59,200 the crypt infrastructure, the older, more traditional Web 2 863 00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:03,040 infrastructure, let's say, is handled by people that already 864 00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:06,000 took this very seriously and already like plugged the holes 865 00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:08,240 to some extent. It will be problematic if it 866 00:45:08,240 --> 00:45:12,480 happened from one day to the next, but you have centralized 867 00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,760 authorities, you have banks that would just refuse to transact 868 00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:17,360 for a day or something like that. 869 00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:22,080 But really, too OK, this is a cultural problem. 870 00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:24,280 We could solve it tomorrow. We could all agree that quantum 871 00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:28,080 risk is real, and tomorrow we do something. 872 00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:32,440 What do we do? How do we switch the 873 00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:34,440 cryptographic primitives used by web tree? 874 00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:38,440 Because web 3, unlike web 2, made its most of it. 875 00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:42,040 Maybe not its entire fortune, but most of it from very clever 876 00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:43,800 new applications of cryptography. 877 00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,760 Some of these are really really sophisticated, like it's 878 00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:50,240 elliptic curve cryptography. Used to do lots of fancy stuff 879 00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:53,600 like 0 knowledge proofs. Now not not all of them are ECC 880 00:45:53,600 --> 00:46:00,040 based, but some nice ones are. We built an economy on advanced 881 00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:03,360 cryptography and therefore there's a lot of primitives that 882 00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:06,360 people from outside web tree don't really care about it, like 883 00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:08,720 they've not worked on it because they don't need them. 884 00:46:09,240 --> 00:46:13,160 And so it's up to the chase that use them to figure out how 885 00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:15,920 they're going to replace them in a quantum resistant way. 886 00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:18,240 This is what the Cambridge workshop for the Ethereum 887 00:46:18,240 --> 00:46:20,960 Foundation was about. It was figuring out which parts 888 00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:24,760 of the stack need changing. What are the candidates and how 889 00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:27,440 we can do it in a way that makes everybody happy? 890 00:46:27,440 --> 00:46:31,160 And so even if everybody suddenly believed that quantum 891 00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:34,840 risk is real and they understood the potential impact on the 892 00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:38,240 economy, even if they all agreed to do something, which is super 893 00:46:38,240 --> 00:46:40,680 hard because the entire point of the centralization is that there 894 00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:43,960 are so many different voices and so many different opinions that 895 00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:46,320 have to sort of coalesce for something to happen. 896 00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:50,120 Even then, it would be challenging to change some of 897 00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:52,720 the infrastructure. But for example, for Bitcoin, 898 00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,440 most of the risk is in one place. 899 00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:59,200 It's in the at the station part, it's in the signatures. 900 00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:03,720 We could agree to pick one of the new schemes and that might 901 00:47:03,720 --> 00:47:06,560 be relatively easy. There are there are various 902 00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:08,680 mitigations and there are proposals that have been put 903 00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:12,200 forward that are really well studied that would fix this in 904 00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:15,160 one way or another. But the problem there is the 905 00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:20,680 Bitcoin community is fairly fragmented and a lot of the big 906 00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:24,600 voices are very opinionated. And so they're the cultural 907 00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:28,680 elements is the more I think important factor in Ethereum. 908 00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:30,880 It's a technical element that really makes a big difference. 909 00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:34,920 There's so much stack to change. So my question here, so let's 910 00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:41,840 say if you look at Bitcoin, so it's what will be needed that, 911 00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,520 you know, the core developer make some changes to the Bitcoin 912 00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:49,520 protocol and maybe the wallets and the miners obviously have to 913 00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:51,680 like switching new software, something like that. 914 00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:54,840 Or is it something where, you know, you didn't also need to 915 00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:58,240 have, you know, the individual Bitcoin holders, you know, kind 916 00:47:58,240 --> 00:48:01,840 of take action and, and like, let's say, for example, transfer 917 00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:08,200 their coins to, you know, some kind of new accounts that are 918 00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,760 now quantum proof? Yeah, you'd have to depends on 919 00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:14,760 the proposal. There are proposals that are 920 00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:18,680 less invasive, but to some extent at least some of the 921 00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,520 users would have to make active migration. 922 00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:23,880 That is the biggest of it. Actively migrate. 923 00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:26,640 And if you can steal the coins of those who don't actively 924 00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:29,680 migrate. I mean, that's like almost 925 00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:34,680 impossible. How do you like imagine it from 926 00:48:35,080 --> 00:48:37,840 from the point of view of how the game would look, you 927 00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:40,120 changed. Let's say that everybody agrees 928 00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:43,120 we have some new system. However, it is some new system 929 00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:45,080 that we put in place at some point. 930 00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:49,200 We fork Bitcoin, we patch Bitcoin, everybody migrates. 931 00:48:49,720 --> 00:48:52,960 Now we have a new authentication system. 932 00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:56,000 There's a new cryptographic at the station that is quantum 933 00:48:56,000 --> 00:49:00,920 secure contour resistant. How do you make sure that you 934 00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:05,360 migrate the wallet contents from the old system to the new 935 00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:09,360 system? Whatever you do, somehow each 936 00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:13,200 wallet owner has to establish that they are the owner of the 937 00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:18,880 new system. Now for many of the accounts, 938 00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:21,960 this is doable by relying on something which is already 939 00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:24,360 quantum resistant. For example, the derivation of 940 00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:27,560 the private key for many modern wallets comes from a seat 941 00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:32,600 phrase, and you can build proofs that you know the seat phrase 942 00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:35,200 coming up. Like going back to the seat 943 00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:37,840 phrase from even the private key is hard. 944 00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:42,760 And so in some derivation branches, but they, they exist, 945 00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:44,840 people use them. And so you could in principle 946 00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:48,840 say, OK, if you want access to your funds again after the fork, 947 00:49:49,600 --> 00:49:52,720 you produce a proof that you knew the, that you knew the seat 948 00:49:52,720 --> 00:49:54,800 phrase without revealing the seat phrase because that would 949 00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:55,920 break the security of your account. 950 00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:00,520 Some proposals exist. I, I think Vitalik backed one 951 00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:04,960 some time ago for Etherium that would do something like this. 952 00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:09,320 That's fine, except for the earlier accounts that we're not 953 00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:11,200 based on this particular mechanism. 954 00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:13,680 And for those, what do you do? Do you freeze them? 955 00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:16,840 Do you return the coins to the ecosystem? 956 00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:20,960 Some of those may legitimately be dead and never used, and so 957 00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:23,640 taking them out of circulation might be a way to handle it. 958 00:50:24,720 --> 00:50:29,520 The threat that they would have to be burned might be enough to 959 00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:32,520 push the original owners to do the migration. 960 00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:36,840 But at the same time, for some of these people, revealing that 961 00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:40,320 they are the owners of those coins is a problem. 962 00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:43,080 And they do have a private voice in the process. 963 00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,440 And they might just oppose it. Or there's just the legitimate 964 00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:50,000 concern that this might fail in some way, or it might impact 965 00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:53,560 some people too heavily that have a stake but not a visible 966 00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:56,000 one in how the ecosystem is updated. 967 00:50:56,400 --> 00:50:58,960 So it's it's challenging. At some point something needs to 968 00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:02,720 be done to link the old, the old proof to the new proof, because 969 00:51:02,720 --> 00:51:05,280 the proof has changed. And anybody, otherwise anybody 970 00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:09,520 who has a quantum computer could just say, oh, yes, I am, I am 971 00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:10,520 Satoshi. Hello. 972 00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:15,000 Now, probably that wouldn't be believed or it would be subject 973 00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,520 to huge scrutiny. But there are many such cases. 974 00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:21,240 Not a huge majority, not even, I don't think it's a large 975 00:51:21,240 --> 00:51:26,760 minority even, but enough that we are still discussing how to 976 00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:29,520 do this. There is a privacy component to 977 00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:32,640 this as well that I think I certainly didn't realize. 978 00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:36,800 And it's this idea that you, you can harvest large amounts of 979 00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:39,080 encrypted data, doesn't have to be crypto. 980 00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:40,720 It could be anything. It could be your signal chats, 981 00:51:40,720 --> 00:51:44,000 could be your, you know, encrypted vaults on cloud 982 00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:48,080 storage and that when quantum computing is here that we'll be 983 00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:51,280 able to decrypt those. And John, you've, you've talked 984 00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:56,840 about allegedly governments and and sort of the nation states 985 00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:02,160 acquiring and harvesting tons of encrypted data for potential 986 00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:05,440 decryption later. How big is this threat and what 987 00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:07,720 do we know about it actually happening right now? 988 00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:10,800 Well, that's a great question. So let me start by saying I'm a 989 00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:15,440 big fan of Monero and Z cash and you know Zuko and and so on and 990 00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:18,360 all those communities. OK, I had a conversation on 991 00:52:18,360 --> 00:52:20,200 Twitter with fluffy Pony recently. 992 00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:22,840 I guess he goes by just Ricardo now, but I was thinking of as 993 00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:25,560 fluffy Pony great guy. And I asked him point blank and 994 00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:27,360 to his credit, he was very upfront. 995 00:52:27,720 --> 00:52:30,040 They have a road map OK for post quantum. 996 00:52:30,040 --> 00:52:32,320 However, it cannot account for the past. 997 00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:36,240 OK, so if you are using Monero today, it's broken, in other 998 00:52:36,240 --> 00:52:38,600 words, and I'm not saying look, privacy is normal. 999 00:52:38,600 --> 00:52:42,000 I'm not saying it's not. I'm saying that it's also easy 1000 00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:45,120 to infer that probably some people are using, you know, 1001 00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:47,040 something like Monero in an illicit way. 1002 00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:49,240 And it's no fact, it's no secret. 1003 00:52:49,240 --> 00:52:51,800 I mean, this isn't me saying anything controversial, but the 1004 00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:55,200 Dark Mark is favoring Monero. So anyone who's using it right 1005 00:52:55,200 --> 00:52:58,880 now for anything illicit, the tax avoidance, selling drugs, 1006 00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:02,840 whatever, they don't have a way to obfuscate the past, meaning 1007 00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:06,400 that in the future when they go post quantum, the past can be 1008 00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:09,120 ultimately revealed. OK, so in a sense, Manero's 1009 00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:10,760 already broken from that standpoint. 1010 00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:12,960 And, and this is coming straight from Fluffy Pony. 1011 00:53:12,960 --> 00:53:15,040 I mean, he tweeted at me and I could, I could send you guys a 1012 00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:17,320 link later and I read their stuff and everything and they 1013 00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:19,800 have a great road map and so on. But this is an issue, right? 1014 00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:24,640 So basically it's very simple. All of the encrypted 1015 00:53:24,640 --> 00:53:28,000 communications, transactions, etcetera happening now, which 1016 00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:31,320 are indeed currently safe and secure that can be harvested. 1017 00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,120 And I'm certain, I mean, I think it's preposterous to think it's 1018 00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:37,120 not being harvested and then later it can be unlocked and 1019 00:53:37,120 --> 00:53:37,960 revealed. OK. 1020 00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:41,840 So that is a big problem that currently exists. 1021 00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:45,520 I think specifically as it relates to the scenario I just 1022 00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:47,240 described for certain kinds of transactions. 1023 00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:50,680 I'm not sure that people understand this issue yet, but 1024 00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:55,160 that is another kind of meta that I think will enter into the 1025 00:53:55,160 --> 00:53:58,760 ecosystem at one point in the not too distant future. 1026 00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:03,280 I mean, if I can add one more point to that, this is a 1027 00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:05,520 problem. Again, it's useful to compare 1028 00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:09,000 the issues we have in Web three with the issues that exist in 1029 00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:12,640 the broader economy, in the broader Internet, in in Web 2 1030 00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:15,080 technologies in what we use today for everything. 1031 00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:18,560 It is a fact, an established fact, a certain large government 1032 00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:22,000 organizations have been harvesting lots of data, but 1033 00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:24,000 that's mostly data that's in transit. 1034 00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:27,600 And so while it is easy to harvest to some extent for 1035 00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:30,800 somebody who is really tapped into most of the global notes, 1036 00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:34,240 it is not necessarily easy to harvest it in such a way that 1037 00:54:34,240 --> 00:54:37,120 you have all of the pieces that are necessary to ultimately 1038 00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:39,800 decrypted. We've been using sort of forward 1039 00:54:39,800 --> 00:54:44,680 secrecy for a while in classic Web 2 communications. 1040 00:54:45,240 --> 00:54:48,720 There's this problem has been known for decades. 1041 00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:52,520 It wasn't patched immediately, but it was patched a while ago. 1042 00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:55,920 There's also a lot of private data though, and that private 1043 00:54:55,920 --> 00:55:03,040 data is technically somewhere some data center at if you're a 1044 00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:05,520 bigger government organization, perhaps you can compel the 1045 00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:07,680 company to give it to you, perhaps you can't. 1046 00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:10,200 Some of these companies are compliant. 1047 00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:14,320 Other companies make it business point to not be compliant and so 1048 00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:17,240 they will try their done. It's best not to make that data 1049 00:55:17,240 --> 00:55:19,160 available in such a way that it can be easy to decrypt. 1050 00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:21,360 There's a challenge. There's a cost associated to 1051 00:55:21,360 --> 00:55:24,960 doing this at scale. In classical infrastructure, we 1052 00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:30,120 built an entire ecosystem where we keep all of our data on a 1053 00:55:30,160 --> 00:55:33,600 large database that's distributed across 10s of 1054 00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:36,960 thousands of nodes for the very purpose of making it available 1055 00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:39,480 to everybody at all times. It's literally the way we 1056 00:55:39,480 --> 00:55:44,080 structured our application C web tree that anybody can get the 1057 00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:46,760 whole history of Monero from the very start. 1058 00:55:46,760 --> 00:55:50,400 In fact, they have to if they want to run a full node from the 1059 00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:53,400 very start and they can just, you know, keep it. 1060 00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:56,160 All they have to do is ask someone else who has it and they 1061 00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:58,960 will get it. So it's very easy. 1062 00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:01,360 If you have a quantum computer and you're a private company and 1063 00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:04,760 you're not, let's say a large government organization, it's 1064 00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:08,120 really easy to at least do this. You can very much take 1065 00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:12,600 sufficiently powerful computer, 1015 of them. 1066 00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:16,960 You run a full node for each one of the 15 biggest things and 1067 00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:18,840 then you keep it synced. That's all you have to do. 1068 00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:21,960 You keep them in like a small warehouse for the next 5-10 1069 00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:23,600 years. And when you have access to 1070 00:56:23,600 --> 00:56:26,200 quantum computing capabilities, you start decrypting from the 1071 00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:27,920 start. And most of that will probably 1072 00:56:27,920 --> 00:56:30,440 be useless. It's just people who wanted 1073 00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:35,240 privacy in their transactions or their communications and not all 1074 00:56:35,240 --> 00:56:38,440 of it. Some of it will be criminal. 1075 00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:42,320 John correctly says there. Some of these technologies have 1076 00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:45,360 been used for illicit transactions to various degrees, 1077 00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,920 like not everything is arranging assassinations. 1078 00:56:49,120 --> 00:56:53,920 There's also some like, milder cases of tax optimization, let's 1079 00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:57,400 call it. Let's take this the least 1080 00:56:57,560 --> 00:56:59,760 problematic 1 is still interesting to governments 1081 00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:01,920 because they're like, OK, yeah, this person is not going to go 1082 00:57:01,920 --> 00:57:04,360 to jail, but we're simply going to send them a bill for the 1083 00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:05,920 money that they haven't paid yet. 1084 00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:08,800 And there's a revenue in that they might be like willing to 1085 00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:11,080 pay a private company to provide this data. 1086 00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,600 But more interestingly, these platforms are used by people who 1087 00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:18,000 don't trust traditional infrastructure because not 1088 00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:21,200 because they're doing something illicit per SE, but because 1089 00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:26,200 they're doing something which is not OK with the current 1090 00:57:26,200 --> 00:57:28,120 government or with other governments they might be 1091 00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:30,760 exposed to. So think activists, think 1092 00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:33,840 resistant groups. We have a few active conflicts 1093 00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:36,160 in the world. Some of these people coordinate 1094 00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:38,800 through encrypted channels that rely on liptic cryptography. 1095 00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:41,400 Some of the information exchange will be relevant in five years 1096 00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:44,280 or even in 10 years. And so that information is 1097 00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:47,440 already broken. If you are a previously focused 1098 00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:52,080 application today and you settle your services as privacy basal 1099 00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:54,480 elliptic curve cryptography, I mean, you're putting some people 1100 00:57:54,480 --> 00:57:57,760 in danger, significant danger if the information has to remain 1101 00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:01,280 private for sufficiently long. We don't know how long, right? 1102 00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:04,760 We don't really know if Psych Quantum has quantum computers 1103 00:58:04,760 --> 00:58:07,200 today. They don't have public machines, 1104 00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:11,640 but they did start building fabrication centers. 1105 00:58:12,520 --> 00:58:15,000 They have their fabs. So exactly how far can they 1106 00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:16,680 possibly be with the investment they have? 1107 00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:19,560 Maybe they will not get there. Maybe they've already gotten 1108 00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:21,600 there. The point is, you might not know 1109 00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:25,280 for a really long time. Yeah, when I was, you know, 1110 00:58:25,280 --> 00:58:31,720 after I spoke with John in in Cannes and afterwards I 1111 00:58:31,720 --> 00:58:34,720 mentioned it to a few people, right, sort of in the next day, 1112 00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:37,080 you know, what about quantum? What do you think about the 1113 00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:40,200 quantum rest? Like talked a little bit about 1114 00:58:40,200 --> 00:58:44,600 the conversation, you know, kind of, you know, technical L1 1115 00:58:44,600 --> 00:58:47,200 founder, so a bunch of people who are like, you know, sort of 1116 00:58:48,680 --> 00:58:50,800 that very technical key crypto people. 1117 00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:56,400 And and I think that the most common response we got about was 1118 00:58:56,400 --> 00:59:01,560 like basically, and you know, I remember John, you were saying 1119 00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:03,760 like, well, it could be like 2028, right? 1120 00:59:03,760 --> 00:59:07,640 Like it like a few year or maybe 20-30, but like it was close, 1121 00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:10,080 right? So I think the most common 1122 00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:13,120 response I got was again, yeah, I'm aware of quantum and I know 1123 00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:15,240 it's a problem and then I know it will come. 1124 00:59:15,240 --> 00:59:18,760 But like it's way further away, right? 1125 00:59:18,760 --> 00:59:25,520 It's more like, you know, 2035 or like it's, it's basically far 1126 00:59:25,520 --> 00:59:28,480 enough away that like I don't really have to worry about it 1127 00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:31,640 now. I guess that is like really the 1128 00:59:31,640 --> 00:59:37,280 crux of the question, right? Because if it is 2028 pretty 1129 00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:40,760 close right now. I remember actually, you know, I 1130 00:59:40,760 --> 00:59:43,320 think you John was saying like, well, I don't really want to 1131 00:59:43,320 --> 00:59:45,800 invest in anything where I'm going to be locked up for four 1132 00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:50,160 years, right? Because like that might be, you 1133 00:59:50,160 --> 00:59:54,800 know, my mean you're going to be locked up when when sort of that 1134 00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:58,040 happens. So yeah, I would love to get 1135 00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:01,960 your takes on on this timeline. Like what do you guys personally 1136 01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:07,240 think is likely? And and how wide is the range 1137 01:00:07,240 --> 01:00:11,680 here in terms of opinions that the experts have? 1138 01:00:11,840 --> 01:00:15,840 Well, maybe I'll give market oriented answer and and Stefano 1139 01:00:15,840 --> 01:00:17,400 can give you a much more detailed answer. 1140 01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:21,680 But OK. One of the things I say is in my 1141 01:00:21,680 --> 01:00:24,560 opinion quantum readiness will be one of the most bullish 1142 01:00:24,560 --> 01:00:26,520 indicators of price going forward. 1143 01:00:26,520 --> 01:00:29,880 So if you're an L1 founder or community, there is a tremendous 1144 01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:34,640 incentive in my opinion to signal quantum readiness and 1145 01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:38,560 indeed, so here's the scenario. Ethereum is quantum ready, 1146 01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:42,000 Solana is not. Two years from now, some big 1147 01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:45,240 news comes out of a breakthrough and smart capital allocators. 1148 01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:47,960 You know, you look at a guy like Givgani, Gachberg, RE-7, you 1149 01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:50,120 look at Gauntlet, etcetera. They're deploying hundreds of 1150 01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:53,600 1,000,000 billions of stable coins in the Defy and generating 1151 01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:55,320 yield and building great businesses. 1152 01:00:55,320 --> 01:00:56,880 This is smart money. They're going to look at 1153 01:00:56,880 --> 01:00:58,680 something like that and they already are starting to pay 1154 01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:01,760 attention to the stuff and they're going to say, OK, all 1155 01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:05,840 the TVL we have on Solana put that on Ethereum even though we 1156 01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:08,040 don't have. One that that relies on that two 1157 01:01:08,040 --> 01:01:10,160 year. I mean, the the thing of quantum 1158 01:01:10,160 --> 01:01:15,360 readiness being a real factor only only is the extent that 1159 01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:19,520 people think it's a massive issue and it's an issue soon, 1160 01:01:19,520 --> 01:01:21,040 right? If people think it's an issue 1161 01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:23,320 further down the line. And of course, it also depends 1162 01:01:23,320 --> 01:01:25,560 on what do you think other people think, right? 1163 01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:27,440 So correct. That is true. 1164 01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:30,400 But here's the thing, and I wrote this article called the 1165 01:01:30,400 --> 01:01:33,800 institutional force function. Now that public companies and 1166 01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:37,000 all these big institutions, they have fiduciary responsibilities. 1167 01:01:37,000 --> 01:01:39,960 And so the quantum risk disclosures, you know, BlackRock 1168 01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:42,000 significantly updated and others, etcetera. 1169 01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:44,000 If you're, if you're one of these institutions, you 1170 01:01:44,000 --> 01:01:46,600 definitely don't want to be sued in the event something happens. 1171 01:01:46,640 --> 01:01:50,880 And when you're in a situation where like that event, when that 1172 01:01:50,880 --> 01:01:55,080 will happen is unknown, but you have pieces of information like 1173 01:01:55,080 --> 01:01:57,120 Google Willow was a big piece of information. 1174 01:01:57,800 --> 01:02:00,920 The point Stefano made earlier about error correction, if we 1175 01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:04,640 get to that threshold and we see that also proliferate, right? 1176 01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:06,800 It gets public and everyone talks about it, that is another 1177 01:02:06,800 --> 01:02:09,320 point of information. So in terms of reducing your 1178 01:02:09,320 --> 01:02:12,320 liability for these large institutions, you don't want to 1179 01:02:12,320 --> 01:02:15,000 get sued where somebody says, well, you had all this 1180 01:02:15,000 --> 01:02:16,640 information and you didn't take action. 1181 01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:18,680 OK. So there's a lot of motivators 1182 01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:23,760 that I think will flow funds to networks that are quantum ready, 1183 01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:27,280 even though we don't exactly know when something might happen 1184 01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:30,160 as we keep going along and we get more and more information, 1185 01:02:30,160 --> 01:02:32,920 more and more news and so on. And just one more quick point to 1186 01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:36,920 make on that. As far as when and so on, I 1187 01:02:36,920 --> 01:02:40,040 don't think it's a conspiracy. And I think Stefano agrees that 1188 01:02:40,040 --> 01:02:42,480 the first run of this kind of capability will go to the 1189 01:02:42,480 --> 01:02:45,640 military intelligence apparatus, you know, the CIA then and say 1190 01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:49,520 whatever, etcetera. OK, you look at the example I 1191 01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:53,480 use is the Sr. 71 Blackbird, that super futuristic spy plane. 1192 01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:55,440 They started building that in the 50s. 1193 01:02:55,600 --> 01:02:58,880 OK, when you look at it today, it looks like an incredible 1194 01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:02,240 modern aircraft, but you know, it flew at Mach 3IN in in the 1195 01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:07,440 60s and 70s and so on, right? So I think advanced states of, 1196 01:03:07,480 --> 01:03:11,080 you know, basically strategic technology is something that, 1197 01:03:11,600 --> 01:03:14,640 you know, these governments definitely, you know, focus on. 1198 01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:19,480 So what I'm saying is I don't think there's any good reason to 1199 01:03:19,480 --> 01:03:23,440 suggest that we're going to know, OK, in some very public 1200 01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:26,760 way when this capability exactly exists, because I think it'll go 1201 01:03:26,760 --> 01:03:30,200 to this military intelligence apparatus first, and they may 1202 01:03:30,200 --> 01:03:32,280 have strong incentives to keep things quiet. 1203 01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:36,280 But here's another scenario, and this is about confidence. 1204 01:03:36,520 --> 01:03:39,760 If the confidence, if people start to get nervous, that's 1205 01:03:39,760 --> 01:03:43,400 enough for cascading waves of liquidations and the prices to 1206 01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:45,520 trend to 0. Even if your coins are quantum 1207 01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:48,640 safe, but everybody's scared and you're holding your crypto and 1208 01:03:48,640 --> 01:03:52,160 it's just losing 50 percent, 60%, etcetera, that's already 1209 01:03:52,160 --> 01:03:54,480 bad enough. And what I'm saying is when you 1210 01:03:54,480 --> 01:03:58,960 look at, for example, Ross, OK, and the Silk Road thing, the FBI 1211 01:03:58,960 --> 01:04:02,640 agents went to jail too, right? I'm not accusing any government 1212 01:04:02,640 --> 01:04:04,320 official of doing something nefarious. 1213 01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:06,600 I'm just saying there's a lot of different ways this stuff can 1214 01:04:06,600 --> 01:04:08,760 leak. And so even if the military 1215 01:04:08,760 --> 01:04:12,800 intelligence apparatus gets the capability first and somehow 1216 01:04:12,800 --> 01:04:17,040 that gets out, that is enough to cause concern and a loss of 1217 01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:20,280 confidence. Anything along those lines will 1218 01:04:20,280 --> 01:04:22,640 start to send prices trending down. 1219 01:04:22,640 --> 01:04:25,240 And that's when I think smart money allocators and others, 1220 01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:28,120 they're going to just, you know, not have as much risk on chain 1221 01:04:28,120 --> 01:04:31,400 in various positions and so on. So that is another element to 1222 01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:33,520 this too. Even before we have the quantum 1223 01:04:33,520 --> 01:04:36,800 computers, that perception and that is definitely an unknown 1224 01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:39,320 and it's something that I think people are going to start 1225 01:04:39,320 --> 01:04:41,280 factoring into their risk calculations. 1226 01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:43,120 Stephanie, I want to give you the opportunity to also talk 1227 01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:47,800 about Neverlocal and this idea of contextual cryptography. 1228 01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:50,720 Yeah, what? What is what? 1229 01:04:50,720 --> 01:04:53,760 What is your vision for Quantum Money and how are you guys 1230 01:04:53,760 --> 01:04:56,800 building this? Yeah, First, I I'd like to add 1 1231 01:04:57,160 --> 01:05:00,440 like the technical point to what John just said just briefly. 1232 01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:05,320 We don't think that quantum risk will come in the early twenty 1233 01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:09,120 30s because we have some opinions with most of us are 1234 01:05:09,120 --> 01:05:11,520 scientists. We look at what the progression 1235 01:05:11,520 --> 01:05:14,880 is, what the timelines projected by the companies are and whether 1236 01:05:14,880 --> 01:05:17,280 they're on track. And if there's a line that kind 1237 01:05:17,280 --> 01:05:20,760 of goes straight and it continues to go straight and the 1238 01:05:20,760 --> 01:05:24,000 points continue to fall on the line month after month, year 1239 01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:26,880 after year, and there's a spread across some companies, but 1240 01:05:26,880 --> 01:05:29,240 they're roughly all in the same neighborhood. 1241 01:05:30,280 --> 01:05:33,440 I mean, then you draw that line to like the twenty 30s and you 1242 01:05:33,440 --> 01:05:35,920 ask, when will we hit the magic number? 1243 01:05:35,920 --> 01:05:38,120 And that's not in the 20 forties, that's not in the 20 1244 01:05:38,120 --> 01:05:40,320 fifties, that's in the mid twenty 30s. 1245 01:05:40,360 --> 01:05:42,560 Very realistic. So I just wanted to say it's 1246 01:05:42,880 --> 01:05:45,240 there's a lot of perception risk. 1247 01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:48,280 Like people at some point just switch and say, oh, this is real 1248 01:05:48,680 --> 01:05:51,600 because of some announcement, because of some demonstration, 1249 01:05:51,600 --> 01:05:53,040 because of some sudden information. 1250 01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:56,280 But even if you don't have that, you just have lines going up 1251 01:05:56,360 --> 01:05:58,440 pretty much on track. You have the cost of the 1252 01:05:58,440 --> 01:06:01,480 algorithms going down because people make more and more 1253 01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:05,360 efforts to make them practical. Now that the end is insight. 1254 01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:08,560 And I mean, you draw an intercept and try to figure out 1255 01:06:08,560 --> 01:06:11,800 roughly where they meet. There is the risk is there. 1256 01:06:11,800 --> 01:06:14,880 It's not it's not really a matter of opinion anymore. 1257 01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:18,560 It's a matter of, I mean, people publish timelines, Dots fall on 1258 01:06:18,560 --> 01:06:24,280 timelines, Timelines say 2035 S In that sense, it's a, it's a 1259 01:06:24,280 --> 01:06:27,240 simple consideration to make these days. 1260 01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:29,480 There's so much progress that you can track it. 1261 01:06:29,480 --> 01:06:30,800 It will happen. Maybe it won't happen. 1262 01:06:30,800 --> 01:06:33,840 There's going to be some roadblocks, who knows, But there 1263 01:06:33,840 --> 01:06:37,560 is some numerical evidence. 5 But then who knows, it could be 1264 01:06:37,560 --> 01:06:42,200 faster. But 35 is where roughly they go. 1265 01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:44,000 But they might have an acceleration, they might not be 1266 01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:46,560 telling you exactly what capabilities they have or they 1267 01:06:46,560 --> 01:06:49,040 might be lying about it. That's also possible. 1268 01:06:49,080 --> 01:06:51,680 They might just all be over hyping what they're doing. 1269 01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:55,360 There's a spread of course, but at the very least we know that 1270 01:06:55,360 --> 01:06:59,600 in principle that's the that's where the line hits the target. 1271 01:07:01,080 --> 01:07:08,240 But yes, sorry, never local. So this is where we switch from 1272 01:07:08,880 --> 01:07:12,360 quantum computing to what I initially said is, is quantum 1273 01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:14,840 cryptography, which is slightly different discipline, slightly 1274 01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:16,960 different investment pool more than anything else. 1275 01:07:16,960 --> 01:07:20,480 The underlying technology is similar in many ways, but the 1276 01:07:20,760 --> 01:07:24,360 applications and potential customers and the efforts to 1277 01:07:24,360 --> 01:07:26,960 bring it into the world are different. 1278 01:07:27,200 --> 01:07:30,200 They're they're at the different stage in terms of development. 1279 01:07:30,200 --> 01:07:32,120 They're different in terms of the applications that people 1280 01:07:32,120 --> 01:07:35,960 want. So the state of things today is 1281 01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:41,320 that there's quite quite a few providers of quantum network 1282 01:07:41,320 --> 01:07:43,840 infrastructure. What people call the quantum 1283 01:07:43,840 --> 01:07:47,160 Internet doesn't yet exist, but there are small versions of the 1284 01:07:47,160 --> 01:07:49,360 quantum Internet. There's large companies, 1285 01:07:49,640 --> 01:07:56,840 Toshiba, Mitsui that go around and put some small geographical 1286 01:07:56,840 --> 01:08:00,800 fiber optic networks in place for some early customers that 1287 01:08:01,480 --> 01:08:05,480 buy access to these networks and use it for some prototype 1288 01:08:05,480 --> 01:08:08,000 applications. They go to some company that 1289 01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:12,120 sells them some quantum key distribution equipment of more 1290 01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:18,160 or less accurate versions. And they, I'm not sure what they 1291 01:08:18,160 --> 01:08:20,560 do with it, honestly. They they try to integrate it 1292 01:08:20,560 --> 01:08:22,439 with their infrastructure and they start seeing what the 1293 01:08:22,439 --> 01:08:25,880 challenges are and whether they could use it to get more secure 1294 01:08:25,880 --> 01:08:30,160 communications. The state of it is there is one 1295 01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:33,920 large company that that makes quantum key distribution 1296 01:08:33,920 --> 01:08:35,840 hardware. There are many smaller companies 1297 01:08:35,840 --> 01:08:37,240 that make quantum key distribution hardware. 1298 01:08:37,240 --> 01:08:39,640 The large one, the most well known one is ID Quantique. 1299 01:08:39,640 --> 01:08:43,680 ID Quantique was acquired maybe was it 2 1/2 years ago at this 1300 01:08:43,680 --> 01:08:49,200 point by SK Telecom for around fifty $60 million. 1301 01:08:49,200 --> 01:08:50,960 That was the valuation at the time. 1302 01:08:50,960 --> 01:08:54,560 It was recently sold to Ion Q for $250 million. 1303 01:08:54,560 --> 01:08:58,160 And that's a fairly strong indicator that if the ecosystem 1304 01:08:58,160 --> 01:09:00,760 is growing, then there is an interest in having applications 1305 01:09:00,760 --> 01:09:03,560 running on this ecosystem. Some of it is academic or 1306 01:09:04,080 --> 01:09:07,600 government LED. China has the largest network 1307 01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:10,200 for this kind of applications on the coast. 1308 01:09:10,200 --> 01:09:12,479 It's a mix of fiber optic and satellite based. 1309 01:09:12,920 --> 01:09:15,600 There's some Europe, there's some in the US, It's growing. 1310 01:09:15,680 --> 01:09:18,920 It's very early stage. What we realized when we started 1311 01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:22,240 thinking about what do people do with quantum technology in 1312 01:09:22,240 --> 01:09:28,880 cryptography with Fabrizio, was that there is really one 1313 01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:31,720 application that gets sold, which is this quantum key 1314 01:09:31,720 --> 01:09:35,160 distribution. It's a quantum version of the 1315 01:09:35,160 --> 01:09:38,240 key distribution protocols that we use today to secure our 1316 01:09:38,240 --> 01:09:40,200 communications. It's establishing symmetric 1317 01:09:40,200 --> 01:09:44,479 keys, but it has in principle a very useful property, which is 1318 01:09:44,479 --> 01:09:47,160 called the vice independent cryptography. 1319 01:09:47,399 --> 01:09:48,680 It's device independent security. 1320 01:09:49,399 --> 01:09:51,920 It's the idea that you can establish these keys without 1321 01:09:51,920 --> 01:09:56,240 trusting the hardware. So imagine that you you're a 1322 01:09:56,680 --> 01:10:01,680 large organization and you want to put a significant amount of 1323 01:10:01,680 --> 01:10:04,480 money on some private communication between you and 1324 01:10:04,480 --> 01:10:06,800 some other parties. You're a casino, let's say in 1325 01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:12,720 the in Switzerland, and you don't want to be exposed to 1326 01:10:12,720 --> 01:10:15,920 supply chain risks, which today I really very much a 1327 01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:18,440 possibility. You buy some specialized chips 1328 01:10:18,440 --> 01:10:22,840 from somebody. If there's enough money, someone 1329 01:10:22,840 --> 01:10:24,040 will try to put a backdoor on it. 1330 01:10:25,160 --> 01:10:28,400 So you don't want that. And you say, is there a way to 1331 01:10:28,400 --> 01:10:31,800 do so where I can verify that the protocol works, I can test 1332 01:10:31,800 --> 01:10:34,400 it and I don't need to trust the manufacturer or the people who 1333 01:10:34,400 --> 01:10:37,600 shipped it to me. And the answer to that is no if 1334 01:10:37,600 --> 01:10:40,360 you use classical hardware, but yes, if you use quantum 1335 01:10:40,360 --> 01:10:42,320 hardware, which is really revolutionary. 1336 01:10:42,320 --> 01:10:44,560 It's a big difference between classical and quantum 1337 01:10:44,560 --> 01:10:48,000 cryptography. You can reduce the trust to 1338 01:10:48,000 --> 01:10:50,840 operating the protocol, but not the hardware that implements it. 1339 01:10:50,880 --> 01:10:54,640 And quantum key distribution is sold with this promise today. 1340 01:10:55,520 --> 01:10:59,040 But really the versions that are sold make a certain make 1341 01:10:59,040 --> 01:11:03,200 compromises to become practical already, and those compromises 1342 01:11:03,360 --> 01:11:06,880 erode some of these security promises to some extent. 1343 01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:11,960 But in principle, you could make it so that there is no trust 1344 01:11:11,960 --> 01:11:15,280 left in the infrastructure. There is no trust left in the 1345 01:11:15,280 --> 01:11:17,600 hardware. You as long as you operate it 1346 01:11:17,600 --> 01:11:20,560 and the counterparty operates it, and you both make sure that 1347 01:11:20,560 --> 01:11:22,800 the environment in which you operate them is secure, 1348 01:11:22,800 --> 01:11:24,720 something you can do in your basement, let's say, or in your 1349 01:11:24,720 --> 01:11:27,560 data center. Then the rest of the network is 1350 01:11:27,560 --> 01:11:29,520 obstructed away and you don't have to care. 1351 01:11:29,920 --> 01:11:32,240 You don't have to care about people splashing into your fiber 1352 01:11:32,240 --> 01:11:33,520 optics. You don't have to care about 1353 01:11:33,520 --> 01:11:37,920 people bugging or backdooring the hardware that was sent to 1354 01:11:37,920 --> 01:11:42,160 you, because the protocols exploit fundamental properties 1355 01:11:42,160 --> 01:11:46,760 of quantum systems in such a way that you can get security out of 1356 01:11:46,760 --> 01:11:48,840 fundamental randomness, as it's called. 1357 01:11:49,480 --> 01:11:53,240 It's it's an interesting technological advancement. 1358 01:11:53,440 --> 01:11:57,560 I watched one of your talks and the way you describe Quantum 1359 01:11:57,560 --> 01:12:00,280 money I think is sort of resembles a little bit the idea 1360 01:12:00,280 --> 01:12:06,120 of cash where when you accept like a 5 year old bill or a 1361 01:12:06,120 --> 01:12:10,440 dollar or whatever, you don't need any external verification 1362 01:12:10,440 --> 01:12:16,040 to verify that these funds are that, that this is a legitimate 1363 01:12:17,560 --> 01:12:21,040 payment instrument and that you now own this payment instrument, 1364 01:12:21,040 --> 01:12:24,040 which we we sort of need with with block chains, we need that 1365 01:12:24,960 --> 01:12:28,800 the verification of a consensus. Whereas with Quantum money you 1366 01:12:28,800 --> 01:12:31,960 wouldn't need that the owner, the very ownership of the 1367 01:12:31,960 --> 01:12:35,240 instrument would be an indicator that it is legitimate and that 1368 01:12:35,240 --> 01:12:36,880 you own it. Is that a good way to look at 1369 01:12:36,880 --> 01:12:38,280 it? Yes. 1370 01:12:39,080 --> 01:12:42,600 A simplified way to put this is to say that you can't clone 1371 01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:44,960 quantum states. That's the toy version of 1372 01:12:44,960 --> 01:12:46,000 quantum money. You have a. 1373 01:12:46,400 --> 01:12:48,680 It's one of the fundamental properties of quantum states 1374 01:12:48,680 --> 01:12:52,000 that the information encoded within cannot be copied. 1375 01:12:52,000 --> 01:12:55,440 You can modify it, you can destroy it, but you can't really 1376 01:12:55,720 --> 01:12:59,280 copy it in a deterministic way. Now, of course, this is too 1377 01:12:59,280 --> 01:13:00,960 simple. It's the basis of the original 1378 01:13:00,960 --> 01:13:02,840 protocol for one to money, but it's too simplistic for 1379 01:13:02,840 --> 01:13:04,760 practical 1 to money. And so you have to do other 1380 01:13:04,760 --> 01:13:09,280 things to make it practical. But ultimately it is yes, it's 1381 01:13:09,360 --> 01:13:15,880 truly peer-to-peer digital cash. That's the that's the way to put 1382 01:13:15,880 --> 01:13:18,080 it. It's something you want, you 1383 01:13:18,080 --> 01:13:21,480 want cash to be digital. You want value to be 1384 01:13:21,480 --> 01:13:26,040 transferable both locally and across networks, because you 1385 01:13:26,040 --> 01:13:29,760 don't want to be bound by the fact that we are physical beings 1386 01:13:29,760 --> 01:13:32,040 carrying a wallet around. Otherwise it's easy that that's 1387 01:13:32,040 --> 01:13:34,960 cash. You wanted to be unclonable. 1388 01:13:35,120 --> 01:13:38,680 You wanted a value to be anchored to something which 1389 01:13:38,680 --> 01:13:41,480 retains like the truth of who owns it. 1390 01:13:41,600 --> 01:13:46,400 Ownership has to be unequivocal. You cannot manufacture new 1391 01:13:46,400 --> 01:13:48,880 currency. You cannot copy the currency you 1392 01:13:48,880 --> 01:13:50,400 have. The cash you have is the cash 1393 01:13:50,400 --> 01:13:52,760 you have. Of course, physical cash like 1394 01:13:52,760 --> 01:13:55,720 let's say paper banknotes are an approximation of that. 1395 01:13:55,760 --> 01:14:00,440 But over time we have evolved mechanisms to protect the 1396 01:14:00,440 --> 01:14:03,360 copying of value in lock step with the technological 1397 01:14:03,360 --> 01:14:06,400 advancements of the various eras that we've gone through. 1398 01:14:06,400 --> 01:14:10,400 So we had things that were hard to get, then coins which had 1399 01:14:10,400 --> 01:14:15,040 some manufacturing techniques that made them recognizable, 1400 01:14:15,200 --> 01:14:18,840 then we made banknotes, then harder banknotes, then more 1401 01:14:18,880 --> 01:14:21,840 security features in banknotes. And we are today with our 1402 01:14:21,840 --> 01:14:25,720 current cash. What we did unfortunately in the 1403 01:14:26,000 --> 01:14:30,120 move to the digital commerce world, so in the digital 1404 01:14:30,120 --> 01:14:34,920 commerce era, is to sacrifice quite a lot of these features. 1405 01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:40,480 The ability to transact without intermediaries, the ability for 1406 01:14:40,480 --> 01:14:43,760 self custody, all of these were features of cash for ages. 1407 01:14:44,120 --> 01:14:46,880 You had your own value. You carry it around, you can 1408 01:14:46,880 --> 01:14:49,600 give it to anybody you want. There's pretty much an agreement 1409 01:14:49,600 --> 01:14:54,440 that that is the value and it's for prices to determine the 1410 01:14:54,440 --> 01:14:57,200 exchange rates. But but the value of the bank 1411 01:14:57,200 --> 01:14:59,240 note you carry around is almost undisputed. 1412 01:15:01,120 --> 01:15:04,960 When we move to digital commerce, we decided to 1413 01:15:04,960 --> 01:15:08,560 sacrifice some of this for transactability across 1414 01:15:08,560 --> 01:15:10,920 distances. We created intermediaries and 1415 01:15:10,920 --> 01:15:13,200 those intermediaries got more and more control over it. 1416 01:15:13,200 --> 01:15:19,360 And we lost quite a lot of what we had with physical cash to the 1417 01:15:19,360 --> 01:15:24,320 point that today if you talk to, let's say mainstream finance 1418 01:15:24,320 --> 01:15:28,280 analysts, the commonly held view is that cash is essentially an 1419 01:15:28,280 --> 01:15:31,160 obligation by somebody to pay you. 1420 01:15:31,200 --> 01:15:34,320 That's that's how they see cash. They say, OK, cash is not really 1421 01:15:34,320 --> 01:15:36,480 cash. The value is the network value 1422 01:15:36,480 --> 01:15:38,960 and cash is the obligation to somehow be able to redeem it, 1423 01:15:39,200 --> 01:15:40,440 which it didn't used to be the case. 1424 01:15:41,200 --> 01:15:44,520 You could carry around cash that the bank didn't play any role. 1425 01:15:44,560 --> 01:15:48,800 If once we centralized cash, it was the pound, you didn't, it 1426 01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:51,600 didn't matter whether you were banking with Barclays or with 1427 01:15:51,600 --> 01:15:54,840 HSBC london-based. That's why I'm picking like UK 1428 01:15:54,840 --> 01:15:58,160 banks. It didn't matter you you went to 1429 01:15:58,160 --> 01:15:59,800 the shop and you paid with the with the bank. 1430 01:15:59,800 --> 01:16:02,200 Nobody cared where it came from and it wasn't an obligation by a 1431 01:16:02,200 --> 01:16:05,760 specific bank. Now we turned it into that and 1432 01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:08,760 that has a number of side effects that we may or may not 1433 01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:11,440 like. And what are the things that can 1434 01:16:11,440 --> 01:16:12,920 be done with quantum technologies? 1435 01:16:12,920 --> 01:16:17,440 Restore most of those properties is make something which can 1436 01:16:17,440 --> 01:16:21,560 retain value because it cannot be copied and can be potentially 1437 01:16:21,560 --> 01:16:24,680 carried around. If we improve certain parts of 1438 01:16:24,680 --> 01:16:28,080 the quantum information, quantum cryptography stack, the Harbor 1439 01:16:28,080 --> 01:16:33,720 stack enough, we could even have it in our pockets in wallets and 1440 01:16:33,960 --> 01:16:40,480 retains the digital nature that our modern worldwide Internet 1441 01:16:40,480 --> 01:16:44,480 based commerce demands where you want to be able to exchange 1442 01:16:44,480 --> 01:16:47,320 value across a distance as well as in person. 1443 01:16:47,760 --> 01:16:50,280 And so it's hard to design something like that classically 1444 01:16:50,280 --> 01:16:53,000 because classic information can always be copied and so you have 1445 01:16:53,000 --> 01:16:54,960 to rely on something on top of it. 1446 01:16:55,080 --> 01:16:58,400 Consensus is the solution we came up with in Web Tree. 1447 01:16:58,920 --> 01:17:01,480 Thanks. That is, that is very, very 1448 01:17:01,480 --> 01:17:05,200 interesting point. And I feel like at some point it 1449 01:17:05,200 --> 01:17:08,920 will be, you know, worth going deeper and maybe doing some 1450 01:17:08,920 --> 01:17:12,120 follow up conversations on that. And I think on sort of the 1451 01:17:12,120 --> 01:17:16,440 possibilities that get unleashed with Quantum, we've gone for a 1452 01:17:16,440 --> 01:17:20,200 long time. We just want to maybe one very 1453 01:17:20,200 --> 01:17:23,600 brief last question for you, John. 1454 01:17:24,760 --> 01:17:28,160 You know, we spent like 2-3 minutes on it or something. 1455 01:17:29,240 --> 01:17:31,920 So you know, you're obviously an investor as well, right? 1456 01:17:31,920 --> 01:17:35,000 So you've been investing in crypto for for a long time. 1457 01:17:36,280 --> 01:17:41,120 What is like how does that impact your approach to 1458 01:17:41,240 --> 01:17:45,800 investing in your portfolio sort of all your your knowledge and 1459 01:17:45,800 --> 01:17:48,400 your views on the impact of quantum? 1460 01:17:48,400 --> 01:17:50,360 Yeah. I mean, you know, I think about 1461 01:17:50,360 --> 01:17:53,480 it as a paradox. On the one hand, you know, it's 1462 01:17:53,480 --> 01:17:56,400 kind of like there's this and you could look at it at a 1463 01:17:56,400 --> 01:17:58,920 governmental level, for example, ADGM, and I've talked to them 1464 01:17:58,920 --> 01:18:02,000 about this. They're funding investment into 1465 01:18:02,400 --> 01:18:05,120 quantum computing. And at the same time, they're 1466 01:18:05,240 --> 01:18:06,880 developing this crypto ecosystem. 1467 01:18:06,880 --> 01:18:09,800 Everybody's in the UAE, and so they're funding their own 1468 01:18:09,800 --> 01:18:13,040 demise. And so you need a hedge, OK. 1469 01:18:13,200 --> 01:18:16,600 The hedge is, first of all, knowledge to the best of your 1470 01:18:16,600 --> 01:18:19,560 ability, understand this stuff. You know, this kind of a podcast 1471 01:18:19,560 --> 01:18:23,760 is 1 great start. Everybody who is in our space 1472 01:18:23,760 --> 01:18:27,080 and went deep into understanding smart contracts and ZK and all 1473 01:18:27,080 --> 01:18:29,360 these things. They have to start to understand 1474 01:18:29,360 --> 01:18:32,680 what, you know, quantum information systems mean one 1475 01:18:32,680 --> 01:18:35,320 time programs, one time applications, etcetera. 1476 01:18:35,520 --> 01:18:37,400 OK. And so the knowledge base has to 1477 01:18:37,400 --> 01:18:39,560 go up. But then aside from that, you 1478 01:18:39,560 --> 01:18:41,720 need to act. In my opinion, you need to put 1479 01:18:41,720 --> 01:18:47,120 together a plan, OK? I believe that we are still safe 1480 01:18:47,120 --> 01:18:49,800 for quite some time. I think we have another big 1481 01:18:50,800 --> 01:18:53,600 let's say pump left in our ecosystem, maybe a couple. 1482 01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:56,400 I think we're going to get to 10 trillion, maybe even 30. 1483 01:18:57,560 --> 01:19:01,000 And so definitely I want to participate that and I continue 1484 01:19:01,000 --> 01:19:03,920 to, you know, hold Bitcoin and other assets, Ethereum and so 1485 01:19:03,920 --> 01:19:05,200 on. I continue to invest in 1486 01:19:05,200 --> 01:19:07,680 projects, but the time horizon has changed. 1487 01:19:07,680 --> 01:19:10,760 Yeah, it's true. Like I don't really do crypto VC 1488 01:19:10,760 --> 01:19:14,040 deals anymore if like my tokens are four or five years out from 1489 01:19:14,040 --> 01:19:16,960 now. And as a VC you assume that risk 1490 01:19:17,000 --> 01:19:19,880 and that's fine, but not if these assumptions around 1491 01:19:19,880 --> 01:19:23,800 security are in question. And so that's one change, okay. 1492 01:19:23,800 --> 01:19:25,800 Another change is I've definitely pivoted. 1493 01:19:25,800 --> 01:19:27,920 I mean, I did the precede round for never local. 1494 01:19:27,920 --> 01:19:29,880 I was very fortunate to be in that position. 1495 01:19:30,280 --> 01:19:34,240 I'm actively looking at other areas, you know, in a similar 1496 01:19:34,240 --> 01:19:36,760 kind of direction, right? I think it's very hard to get 1497 01:19:36,760 --> 01:19:39,320 into the big quantum deals, but you can do things like buy 1498 01:19:39,320 --> 01:19:42,120 shares of side quantum and secondary markets and so on. 1499 01:19:42,360 --> 01:19:45,560 So I think constructing some part of your portfolio to cover 1500 01:19:45,560 --> 01:19:48,840 this as well. And then, you know, closely 1501 01:19:48,840 --> 01:19:52,600 monitoring, I mean, I've, I'd coded this silly little thing, 1502 01:19:52,600 --> 01:19:55,840 it's called quantumready.info, you know, and I'm trying to kind 1503 01:19:55,840 --> 01:19:58,400 of like basically show the readiness of all the different 1504 01:19:58,400 --> 01:20:00,640 block chains. I monitor that stuff on a daily 1505 01:20:00,640 --> 01:20:03,040 basis. In the event that I see things 1506 01:20:03,040 --> 01:20:06,320 that I deemed to be like significant in terms of, yeah, 1507 01:20:06,320 --> 01:20:09,880 like Stefano said before error correction and so on, then I 1508 01:20:09,880 --> 01:20:13,560 have this knowledge base to inform what I'm going to do with 1509 01:20:13,560 --> 01:20:17,320 my crypto assets. I right now in this moment would 1510 01:20:17,320 --> 01:20:20,960 be lying if I told you that in 2028, for example, I'm going to 1511 01:20:20,960 --> 01:20:25,240 be comfortable like I am now having my, you know, wealth on 1512 01:20:25,240 --> 01:20:28,440 chained. So maybe at that point I kind of 1513 01:20:28,440 --> 01:20:32,160 step back a bit, go off chain, go into quantum safe bank 1514 01:20:32,160 --> 01:20:34,600 account and just observe and see what happens, right? 1515 01:20:34,600 --> 01:20:38,160 I don't know, maybe, maybe not. But I think it's very important 1516 01:20:38,160 --> 01:20:40,720 for all crypto investors to not have it. 1517 01:20:40,720 --> 01:20:43,720 Just in the back of their mind is this vague, nebulous idea of 1518 01:20:43,720 --> 01:20:46,640 like 40 years away and then just be comfortable with that. 1519 01:20:47,120 --> 01:20:49,800 It's exciting and it's interesting and it's 1520 01:20:49,840 --> 01:20:52,960 intellectually stimulating to learn and get into this stuff on 1521 01:20:52,960 --> 01:20:55,760 a daily basis. And then it helps inform how you 1522 01:20:56,080 --> 01:20:58,040 construct your portfolio and manage your risk. 1523 01:20:58,040 --> 01:21:00,520 And I think that's like the appropriate way to think about 1524 01:21:00,520 --> 01:21:02,440 it, at least for me at this. Time Well, thanks guys. 1525 01:21:02,560 --> 01:21:05,160 Thanks for this very lengthy conversation. 1526 01:21:05,880 --> 01:21:09,600 It's been really, really fascinating and I think we will 1527 01:21:09,600 --> 01:21:14,160 need to touch back touch, touch base again in the future about 1528 01:21:14,160 --> 01:21:17,280 this topic as as things continue to to evolve. 1529 01:21:17,280 --> 01:21:22,240 So John, keep us updated on the latest and and Stefano would be 1530 01:21:22,280 --> 01:21:26,080 happy to have you back on at some point as well to track 1531 01:21:26,080 --> 01:21:30,080 progress on Never Local. Thank you very much to you both, 1532 01:21:30,520 --> 01:21:31,160 it was a pleasure.