← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:02]
A
Wake up, honey. A new long term threat to Bitcoin just dropped. Yes, we've got a new hotbed of FUD for crypto and it's not regulation this time. It's quantum computing. Now Google researchers are warning that future quantum machines could break Bitcoin's cryptography. And the timeline might be a lot closer than we thought. Some experts say attackers could already be collecting encrypted data today just to crack it later. We're talking millions of Bitcoin potentially exposed, especially those in older wallets. The good news, this can be fixed. The bad news, the clock is ticking and we may only have until the end of the decade. So today I'm joined by Alex Pruden, the CEO of Project 11, to break down exactly how real this threat is and what crypto needs to do right now. Let's go.
- [00:48]
B
Let's do.
- [01:03]
A
Good morning, everybody. Happy April Fool's Day. To those who celebrate. I was going to play an April Fool's joke on you, but I realized that we just had March Fools Month and everything that happened everywhere last month had to be a complete joke in my humble estimation. And now we're going to talk about something that isn't a joke. In a moment. Of course, that has a quantum threat. Now, I forget 29 out of the 30 days of the month to ask you to subscribe to my channel and to like it. And I know that crypto guys have a problem finding the little like button, but go down there, just play with the like button a little bit. Go ahead and like the channel. I wanted to give you as awkward of an intro as possible. Alex. Morning.
- [01:44]
B
Hey, I've had. I've had more awkward, but not much more awkward. But thanks, Scott. It's great to be here.
- [01:51]
A
Yeah, it's great to have you. So listen, we obviously got this Google report yesterday and we reached out because you had this great thread on it that came from Project 11, of which you were the CEO. You guys have raised a ton of money sounding the alarm on Quantum, or at least preparing blockchains for Quantum long before this Google report. Right? So I guess we can get into that in a minute. But maybe, like, tell me, talk to me like I'm five. Better yet, talk to me like I'm Joe Biden and explain to me,
- [02:22]
B
explain
- [02:23]
A
to me what the quantum threat really is. Because I think even at the most basic level, there's a wild misunderstanding of what this threat is. Some people very defensive that they think we're saying you can break bitcoin and Bitcoin won't exist. Or are we just talking about the ability to hack wallets, but not the Bitcoin chain itself? I mean, maybe just give us the tldr.
- [02:42]
B
Cool. The TLDR is this. Quantum computers are computers that can kind of have superpowers that effectively can solve problems that normal computers can't solve. One of those problems is factoring numbers. And a related problem to that is called the discrete log problem. That's what underlies Bitcoin's cryptography and specifically the signatures in Bitcoin. So when I send a Bitcoin transaction, I sign a message, say, hey, transfer one of my Bitcoin to you, right? And that message, that signature is a digital signature, right? So this uses public key cryptography secured by this discrete log problem. And the whole idea is that if I, you know, I'm sending Bitcoin to your address, and just me knowing your address doesn't mean I can send your funds, right? Only you could send your funds because only you know the private key behind that address, right? What quantum lets you, what quantum computers lets you do is go the way you're not supposed to go, right? It's supposed to only be one way. The private key derives the public key. And if you know the public key, you can't go back. Quantum computers let you go back. What is the implication there? Ownership in a blockchain that uses public key cryptography that's secured by these classical assumptions breaks in a post quantum world. Because in a, in a very real sense, if a cryptographically relevant quantum computer was to come online today, whoever owned it would kind of own all the bitcoin, right? Because owning Bitcoin here means I have the private key. Only me, only I can sign a message to transfer it to you to do anything I want with it. So that is kind of the tldr. I mean, there's, there's a lot of other implications for other networks, but for Bitcoin that's the main thing, right? So Satoshi's coins, or lost coins that have sat around for a long time could be harvested as if they were like buried treasure. And even what the Google paper showed was something else interesting, which is that they have some quantum computers that they think might actually be able to run in the time that it takes to process a transaction. So even if, like.
- [04:30]
A
Right, exactly under the 10 minute block time, you could do it in nine minutes when we used to think it would take like a month or something.
- [04:36]
B
Exactly, exactly. So that's, that was the upshot of the Google Paper. And so as a result, they say, hey, look, no one can wait anymore. Everyone has to migrate now.
- [04:43]
A
It also seemed like the Google paper, in a quick read, they sent it with a ZK proof, which is interesting. So it was like, it was a very crypto thing to do, which, you know, basically was like, here, this is proof that this is real. But we're not going to show you all the underlying things because then you might accelerate this timeline to 2027 or something. That's kind of what it felt like. Right. But to your point, we're talking about 6.7 million bitcoin. I can't say that that's accurate, but somewhere in that realm, vulnerable to quantum attacks. Yeah. So first, I mean, you've got to imagine that now that we know that there's 6.7 million, a lot of those will eventually be moved into quantum proof wallets and such. But that does not answer for the Satoshi coins or a lot of these early ones where you don't know if this person is dead, if they exist or not, if they could move them. Oh, my God. Imagine if Satoshi wakes up and those coins do move. Right. The implications of all this. But this is more about hacking wallets and not breaking a blockchain.
- [05:40]
B
Yeah. For Bitcoin, I'd say that's true. Right. Because the blockchain, okay, so blockchain, and the security of the bitcoin blockchain is driven by mining. Mining is really driven by hashes, hash functions. There is a quantum attack that applies to hash functions that the Google paper actually covers. It's called Grover's algorithm. But most experts, including us and the Google folks who wrote this paper, believe that Grover's algorithm is wildly impractical, even, you know, under very, very optimistic assumptions about quantum computers. Right. And one of the reasons for that is as far as, like, the difference between how what a classical computer can do and a quantum computer can do. Shor's algorithm, which is what lets you go the wrong way in public key cryptography, break the signatures, that has this gigantic exponential advantage. So it's really, really good compared to any classical alternative. Whereas Grover's algorithm to break the hash functions that secure Bitcoin's consensus kind of has just a tiny advantage. So practically speaking, you need a gigantic quantum computer to even think about possibly being competitive, doing quantum mining and breaking Bitcoin's consensus. But yes, I think so in that sense, Bitcoin is safe. Like, you wouldn't have a quantum attacker be able to reorganize blocks but it still leaves this pretty big question of, like, okay, well, if all the assets are insecure, though, and if I try and send, it can just be stolen out of the mempool. And it's still bad. But other protocols, like Ethereum, for example, that run on proof of stake consensus, in that process, you do need signatures. So there. There's kind of like a double layer of vulnerability for protocols like Ethereum.
- [07:06]
A
Yeah, I mean, the phishing scams and attacks that we've seen on multiple other chains kind of show you what's possible there. That might not be possible on Bitcoin. I was actually just sitting there thinking if anybody still names their kid Grover, we had a president named Grover, and there's a Sesame street guy, but I just can't imagine someone in 2026 naming their kid Grover.
- [07:27]
B
There is a first grader in my son's class named Grover, so I can't confirm there is at least one that I know born in the last eight years.
- [07:34]
A
Unbelievable. More shocked by that than the quantum threat to Bitcoin, to be honest. But I want to go kind of through your Project 11 thread here and some of the scariest developments. Right, so you mentioned this one. Now, quantum computer could crack private keys in 9 minutes. Bitcoin average block time is 10 minutes, by the way. These are theoretical, right? Like, okay, yeah, go ahead.
- [07:55]
B
Yeah, so let me just explain that real quick, because this is. I think this is a point of confusion. A lot of people reacted and said, hey, you know, quantum computers can't do this today. And they're absolutely right to say that. So this paper is really an. It describes an algorithmic optimization. So when you think about quantum computing, that and cryptic. And cryptography, you have to kind of take two angles. One is, what do I have? What is the quantum machine that I have? And how much can it do? The other thing is. Or the other angle is what I have to do. What's my goal? Right. And so this paper is really about lowering the bar or moving the goalposts closer, right? It says, hey, it turns out if you don't focus on other general forms of public key cryptography, if you specifically look at the cryptography for Bitcoin, and if you specifically look at our architecture and specifically do a bunch of tricks, and you can lower that bar way down, it doesn't mean that Google has this machine, and it doesn't mean that getting to that point is necessarily easy. But, you know, I think it's important to note that I would still consider that progress. Right. Because If I walk 10ft, or I'm on a football field and I walk 10 yards, or you move the field goal 10, 10, you know, 10 yards closer. It's the same thing, right? Like, I only have less distance to go. So. But that, that. It is important to note that the Google paper, and there was another paper from Caltech that similarly had a bunch of updated resource estimates. These are the algorithm. The field goal range is getting closer. Right. Or the field goal is getting closer. It's not necessarily indicative of the fact there's some new computer out there that can do this.
- [09:30]
A
Yeah. So it could break. This quantum computer, theoretically will be able to break into the top thousand Ethereum wallets in less than nine days.
- [09:38]
B
Yeah. If you had a machine like this. Right. And this is the thing. It's like, it becomes much harder to imagine if you to have this machine when, let's say, like five years ago. In terms of number of physical qubits, what we thought you needed to break something like Bitcoin was 100 billion physical qubits. Right. Or, sorry, 100 billion logical operations. So your qubits had to do 100 billion things. Now this paper has the same number of qubits, but you only need to do 7 million things. Right. So again, just lowers the bar. Makes it easier to get to.
- [10:09]
A
How old are you?
- [10:11]
B
41.
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A
Did you ever play this?
- [10:14]
B
No. Is this a Metari game? Feels like a throwback.
- [10:17]
A
Yeah. I spent the entire hour this morning talking to everybody in the studio about old games that we used to play that, you know, we have some people here in their 20s and some people who are in their 40s. It's a vastly different. I'm like, no, I mean Pong.
- [10:32]
B
I have played Pong. My first system was an Atari. So I definitely have a choice.
- [10:36]
A
You're one of us. Okay. So anyways, what is a qubit?
- [10:40]
B
Qubit. Yep. So qubit is the quantum computer equivalent of a classical bit. Why is it special? Classical bits have to take the value of 0 and 1. And classical bits aren't, like, physically related to one another. Quantum qubits can take the value of 0, 1, or kind of anything in between, and then they can be what's called entangled. So you can have multiple qubits that kind of all share the same bigger state. And the upshot is like, this is. This is actually what makes them possible of solving these hard problems. It's like you can kind of think about it. Like, all these entangled qubits can kind of explore every solution to a problem. In parallel, and then find the right one much more quickly than a classical computer. Again, zero, one can't be kind of entangled. That has to be serial. Right. So that's kind of the quick upshot on qubits. Right.
- [11:31]
A
And so one of the big sort of points of this Google paper talking about moving the goalpost closer was that it's going to require far less, like, exponentially. Well, I guess that, you know, exponential actually has a meaning and maybe that's not it. But far less qubits to accomplish this goal than was ever estimated before by a. Yeah.
- [11:52]
B
They also say something interesting, which is that. And this is something that I learned in the process of Project 11. If you look at kind of the physics side, you know, because Shor's algorithm for physicists historically has kind of been this way to benchmark quantum computing. They don't really care as much about the cryptographic implications. But typically physicists use an older algorithm called rsa, which actually has much longer keys. And it turns out that the shorter key length for bitcoin public keys matters a great deal. And so the authors of the Google paper mentioned that they're like, hey, actually, we may just be scratching the surface. So I think the number of qubits they have in that paper is, I believe, 500,000 for that design. The oratomic paper, the other paper goes all the way down to 10,000. Right. But both papers basically express this concept that, like, hey, we may not even be at the end of the front. This may not be optimal. There may be further to go. We don't know. And this is one of the aspects of uncertainty that make this hard to predict. Which kind of, I think, should motivate the crypto space to say, hey, we should probably just get a jump on this.
- [12:49]
A
Yeah. I mean, from bitcoin news here, Google estimates that breaking bitcoin's cryptography could require fewer than 500k physical qubits, only 1.2. I mean, and the interesting part here is that obviously we've celebrated Taproot. Well, you know, bitcoin maxis can't agree on anything, but 50% of Bitcoiners have celebrated Taproot and its programmability. And the thing that it's things, it's allowed runes, ordinals, NFT programming, all those things. But Taproot may sort of as a side effect here, increase the number of vulnerable wallets because it exposes public keys. And as you said, this allows you, if you have public keys, to go public to private instead of just in One way. So maybe Taproot not helping.
- [13:33]
B
Yeah, and actually BIP360, which is an existing BIP that's being considered by the core developers, it is kind of, I would say advertised as the post a post quantum bip. And what it does is actually it blocks off kind of half of like it takes away half of the functionality of Taproot for exactly this reason is if, you know, it takes the part that kind of could expose your public key and it shuts it off. And that is actually what bip360 is. It's not today in today's form. It doesn't have any like post quantum wallet type or UTXO types or signature types. It's just about stopping people from exposing their public key through taproot transactions.
- [14:11]
A
Yeah, so I want to get kind of to the main point here, which is what you just alluded to earlier. You wrote a great opinion in Coindesk, which was published yesterday. The post quantum transition can't be postponed any longer. So what I find really interesting, I posted the headline, or my news team did, maybe it had one of those little sirens so it looked a little bit hyperbolic. I don't know, like I don't post that stuff. But it said, you know, Google puts out report about quantum risk to bitcoin, Ethereum, other things and the like over emotional butthurt responses to this simple news headline were so telling to me. Because listen, I know that like bitcoiners are a religious cult, like right, okay, you put money and you put faith in something and belief like I am a bitcoiner as much as them. But I also realize there's a non zero chance that something could go wrong and I could be wrong about this entirely. Right. But like why do you think people have such an emotional reaction when rationally, even if you believe this is FUD and it's nonsense, it's whatever, like take the 1% chance that this is a real thing seriously and just be prepared for it. I just don't understand like how you can just be like, this is dumb, it's stupid, it's a non zero, it's an attack on bitcoin. That's what I got over and over and over again.
- [15:27]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's disappointing to me too. But let's also give credit to, you know, two folks in the community. I think if you go back, I mean Project 11 was started over a year ago, nearly a year and a half ago. And at that time, I mean the looks that I got for saying I was working on this was true. Like, are you stupid or insane Right now there are people actually working on post quantum stuff in bitcoin blockstream, notably Adam Back and Jonas Nick and folks there are working on post quantum signature types. There's no BIP yet, but people have actually started doing some stuff. And even though I think there's still way too much of this emotionally driven reactions or criticism, there are people that are starting to move now and pay attention. So I want to acknowledge that progress has been made. What did Winston Churchill say about democracy, about the Americans in World War II? It was like, they'll do the right thing only when all options are exhausted. I don't know, maybe that applies to bitcoin. But yeah, I think there has, there has been real progress and there is increased awareness and I think so that is great. But I do think the other, the other hard thing is that, look, this is just a complicated topic, right? Quantum computing is very complicated. And by the way, and I was on a different show last night with this CEO of Oratomic.
- [16:37]
A
There are no differences.
- [16:39]
B
Yeah, yeah, there was. Sorry. Yeah, I was, I know I was, I was doing. I was talking about this problem with a, with this, with a friend who happens to have written one of these papers. And you know, he acknowledged that from. And he's a quantum computing expert, He's a physicist. He acknowledged it like, like, look, there's been plenty of false promises before in the quantum computing space. It's kind of like crypto. Everyone's like, you know, kind of gotten used to this. So I think some skepticism is definitely warranted. But to your point, I think the point that you made is exactly. The one that I try and make in this op ed is that we don't have to believe that it's 100% certain that a quantum computer is coming in the next five years. We just have to believe that there's some non negligible chance. And because a quantum computer I think is an existential threat to bitcoin, I mean, again, it lets me spend your money or anyone who has a quantum computer spend everyone's money. I mean, we just can't take a risk that we're wrong here. Right? And so I think this is just, it's not even so much like a technical argument. This is just like kind of basic risk mitigation type stuff. So that's, that's kind of my position.
- [17:38]
A
I mean, even Satoshi addressed this on the early chat. Chat rooms, right. He says when asked about quantum computing, if it happens gradually, we can still Transition to something stronger. When you read the upgraded software for the first time, it would resign all your money in the new stronger signature algorithm by creating a transaction, sending the money to yourself with the stronger sig. So it's, I mean, even Satoshi himself addressed this. Him, her or they selves, I have no idea. CIA probably. Right. You know, it wasn't even crazy in Satoshi's mind that some upgrade or change would have to be made in advance of quantum computing. And this is 16 years ago. Yeah.
- [18:17]
B
And I think this actually, it's a good, it's a good segue into something else that the Google paper said. Because something Satoshi said that a lot of people believe and a lot of people express to me is like, hey, Alex, I think quantum is real, but I just don't think it's real today. And I think we'll have enough warning, you know, when that day comes to prepare. I think that is a quite, it's a common. And it's not just kind of immediately irrational when you, when you hear it. The Google paper actually though covers this in a paragraph and basically what? Exactly right. So you've got, you've got that, you've got it there. And they basically, they basically say once you get to being able to factor a 32 bit number, which is significantly smaller than a 256 bit number, they claim they're like, look, there's basically no difference at that point. You're there. Right. And I think. So that's just one reality, is that, you know, for a bunch of reasons like quantum computers are not going to work. They're not going to work, they're not work and then they're going to work. And there's like technical reasons why that is. But without getting into the details there, I think the other thing to note that's relevant is actually going back to the point you made around the ZK proof. Google did not publish the circuit for this. They published a ZK proof. We have to imagine that's because they're worried about this falling into the wrong hands. That's what they said. And you have to imagine that people generally now are not, are potentially quantum physicists are going to be reticent or hesitant to publish results like this. And so then as the general public, will we actually know when that date is and will that be enough time when we do learn it, to actually affect a transition, which I also think is going to take longer than people expect. And that's kind of the other half of the.
- [19:47]
A
So this is not going to be open sourced.
- [19:51]
B
It's very unlikely. Right. Because if you think about whoever has this thing, I mean, look, kind of straightforwardly, they have access to all of the lost Bitcoin. So, you know, 15% of Bitcoin is thought to be lost. So all of that is potentially buried treasure for grabs. I mean, maybe it'll be open source, but that feels unlikely also, given the fact that the national security interest in this thing is like, espionage. Right. Another reason to not expect that we may know what the state of the art is.
- [20:16]
A
Yeah. Okay, so then the big question, which is, listen, my flippant response for years has been, what about the nuclear codes? Not that specifically. I know that the nuclear codes are, like, carried around by a guy in a thing, but like the banking and the Department of Defense, or war, whatever we call them now. Department of.
- [20:35]
B
Exactly.
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A
Murder. You know, the banking system. Right. The flippant sort of response, which I still relatively support to a certain degree, which is like, if Bitcoin's at risk, is this really the lowest hanging fruit, or do we have much bigger problems? Right. Like, will they go hack your bank? Will they go hack the Department of Defense and start launching missiles around the world? Literally everything. It seems like quantum is an everything problem and not just a bitcoin problem.
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B
Yeah. So funny side note, I went to West Point. One of my classmates is currently the guy that carries the briefcase around. One of the guys that carries it around.
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A
So that's how that has photos and videos, like.
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B
Exactly. Yeah. Looking awkward walking past the present or
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A
behind in the back.
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B
Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, look at that job.
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A
You said one of.
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B
Well, there's. I think there's eight or so. They rotate. You know, they need to be next. They need to be within a couple hundred feet of the president at all times. And so, you know, you can't do that.
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A
Unbelievable job.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
Like, really easy, but also really stressful.
- [21:38]
B
Yeah, yeah. There was a Net. There was a Netflix documentary recently about, you know, a hypothetical nuclear war scenario where I recommend watching it. But anyway, this, like the character carrying the briefcase has a notable role. Anyway, back to your question or back to. Back to kind of your point. Look, it's undeniable that the broader world has a problem, right? So like tls, so the encryption that secures Internet trend, you know, communications, military communications, banks, all this stuff definitely does have a quantum vulnerability. I think there's two key differences, though. One is a lot of these systems are actually already transitioning. Like the U.S. government, for example. Like the NSA has said, hey, every Sensitive government system must not use classical cryptography by 2030 and that guidance has been five years old.
- [22:27]
A
That alone kind of make bitcoiners go, maybe there's something here.
- [22:32]
B
I, I think, right. You know, as you no doubt have seen, that there's other people with different takes. But I, yes, I think that alone is enough reason. Right. Because you know, what does the NSA know that we don't? You know, so people are working on this already. In fact, Google Cloudflare have started rolling out post quantum encryption. So that's like a different kind of branch of cryptography that's affected by a Quantum computer. But 50% roughly of all TLS traffic on the web today, I think is what we're up to is post quantum secured in some form. Right. So they're doing this, of course, and you saw Google's announcement that preceded this paper. They're like, hey, we're migrating early to this thing. And of course Google is spending millions of dollars. Okay. So that's one difference is people are actually doing stuff that's like it's happening. They believe this is a problem, they need to secure it. The second difference is the decentralized nature of bitcoin here is, I mean in many ways is its greatest strength in, compared to these systems, but kind of in this specific context it's its greatest weakness. Right. Because when, you know, Google decides it needs to update to postmodern cryptography, there's kind of like one person that just has to say yes. And then by the way, let's just say a world like a quantum computer shows up tomorrow and hacks a bank or some other system that maintains a centralized ledger, someone can just decide to like undo that. It's like, hey, control Z that forget that happened. We're just going back. Right? And that this, that the ability to do that was explicitly what Satoshi created Bitcoin prevent. Right? So there's like not a way to do it. I mean you can hard fork, right? But it's not easy. And so, you know, I think that's, that is what makes, you know, I guess maybe the last thing is that, you know, there's, there's no two factor authentication. When Bitcoin kind of, you know, your bank, like theoretically, like I don't know, your bank's going to text you or if I try and wire all the money out of your account, they may call you. Like there are controls, in other words, in these systems that make them a little more complex. Bitcoin, if I have your private key, I own your Bitcoin. That's it. It's over. There's no. There's no question, by the way. If I use a quantum computer to get that, there's not like a flashing neon sign in the sky either that says, alex is the quantum adversary. It's just going to look to the world like you or Satoshi or an exchange lost control of your key. Yeah. Like, in fact, that may even be how. We may not even learn that a quantum computer comes out until six months after. Like, that's, I think a full. It's a. It's a very plausible scenario. So I think that, again, this goes back to the uncertainty here. And this is like, when there's more uncertainty, you just need to add a bigger buffer in terms of your timeline.
- [24:58]
A
I mean, Satoshi has like 22,000 wallets. Right. In theory, it's not just one big old wallet. So they could just slow roll that. I mean, I guess you'll see one of them. One of them starts moving coins and people are going to start to get skeptical. But it's not like you'll get the full million right at once and be like, quantum.
- [25:14]
B
Yeah. And look, people like to talk about different scenarios. They're like, oh, satoshi's coins moved. Bitcoin will go to zero or no one will attack Coinbase's wallet, because that would be stealing. Or, you know, all these things. Like, look, I think they're just. The reality is we don't know. Right.
- [25:28]
A
Developers, you know, the core developers, who have such a history of getting along and agreeing on everything shown by the block wars and bitcoin cash and bitcoin Satoshi's vision. But is there a way that literally, like, kind of, as Satoshi alluded to, this isn't a thing that you and I do with our individual wallets or exchanges do, but they forked the chain and create something quantum resistant or do something with those million coins that I don't quite understand to make sure that they can't be hacked. Because it seems like if you can't get in touch with Satoshi on the phone right now, you can't do anything about those million coins.
- [26:06]
B
Yeah. So first off, let me just say that, like bitcoin, I believe bitcoin and digital assets based on blockchain rails will survive in the future. I believe that because I think it's just been shown that these are very useful systems to have for finance. So there's no doubt in my mind that these systems will survive. I think the key question we have to ask ourselves Is, and this is maybe more of a markets question. How much chaos do we want to endure in the interim? Right. And how long will it take for us to rebuild people's faith in these systems? Right. So that's sort of what's at stake here in my view. It's true to say that I think the post quantum version of Bitcoin is going to look different than the current version of Bitcoin. So there's a world in which anyone could make a fork right now. In fact there's some quantum resistant bitcoin forks out there that are very little used but do implement some new cryptography. So look, the core devs have the ability or, and again this is Bitcoin, so anyone can contribute. Bitcoin has the ability to upgrade. The challenge is the trade offs are high, they're hard. And we haven't talked about post quantum cryptography yet. But look, I mean the newest signature type that Blockstream just released, right, which is a very, very optimized version of one of the other standard post quantum signatures. Signatures. If I recall, the numbers are somewhere between 10 and 20x the size of existing transactions. So again you highlighted the block size wars. At one point people really, really got fired up about 1 megabyte versus 2 megabyte blocks. Now we're talking about transactions that are somewhere between 10 and 20x in size. It's not that we can't solve it, it's just not going to be straightforward. And that's again means we have to buffer extra time. And if we're worried by that we're not going to, they have enough time. You know, if 2029 really is a day we have to worry about, like Google thinks they're just, I mean, let's just stop messing around. Let's just get to it.
- [27:49]
A
Okay, so do you have a couple more minutes or do you got to go?
- [27:53]
B
Yeah, yeah, I got time.
- [27:54]
A
So what can we do? I mean, you know, like as a, as me, me sitting here as a bitcoiner, what action can I take to I guess support this also? I mean my next question is, you know, we're, we're talking about the proliferation of AI then we're talking about the proliferation of quantum computing. I mean, what happens when you know, quantum computers get access to that sweet, sweet open claw, get clogged codex and like are the solutions, I guess the real question are the solutions we're creating now, can we even foresee the problems once the quantum exists? Like maybe these are all going to be crackable in five minutes.
- [28:30]
B
You know, we wrote a post, me and one of the other co founders of Project 11 wrote kind of a fun post about Star wars and why the droids don't have access to any networks. And the kitschy take on the post is that AI plus all this super advanced technology like quantum is just going to make robots basically super hacking machines, kind of like R2D2. Anything he plugs into you can just hack. Right. And so it's kind of a philosophical question of like look, in this future where AI is driving technological innovation and potentially quantum computing and algorithm design and the ability to hack systems, I mean, is there any hope for cryptography generally? Look, I don't know, that's like kind of a broader philosophical question. But I think going back to the what can people do? I mean first off the good news for most bitcoiners is a quantum computers don't exist today. So like there's not, you don't need to pan. There is truly no, no reason to panic. And I hope, I hope you know, my alarm is about this is not, should not be misconstrued as like people need to run down the streets.
- [29:26]
A
I don't see it as a lot the way this has been presented. I don't, I think the reaction is alarmist but not the actual presentation.
- [29:33]
B
Yeah. And I, you know, look, I, I'm trying to spur people to action who are inclined to not act. Right. So that's sort of why I take the tone that I take. But look, people like you, me, our Bitcoin, if as long as you have good wallet hygiene, you're not reusing the same keys. And by the way, most modern wallets will run that for you like you're good to go. By the way, we have project11.com that, so the Google paper that you highlight that you showed the stats of vulnerable Bitcoin, that's actually from our data project 11.com, we have a resource called the risk list. You can type in your address and be like did I ever expose the public key? And just find out for yourself if your key is exposed because we maintain an up to date list. So that's thing one thing too is look as these post quantum solutions become available, people should adopt them. Right. And I think for Bitcoin it's kind of hard as the user to do much until the protocol does something. Yeah, if you go up in the hamburger. Yeah, go up to the hamburger on the top left. Perfect. And we have a redesign coming out here in the next couple weeks. That's It. Top one this big middle one there. Down, down, down. That one. Nope, one up. That's a, that's a fun one about postpartum, that one. The risk list with a Q risk. Q list, yeah. So in here it shows you all the vulnerable bitcoin and you have a search address you see in there. You can just drop any address in there and it'll tell you if it's vulnerable or not. So this is a feat, this is something people can use if they're interested. But yeah, encouraging. Two things. I think the thing that most bitcoiners can do is encourage sensible debate on this topic and encourage tangible demonstrations of progress towards solving it. I think research is great, but I have been in the blockchain space for some time. I worked at a different crypto startup prior to this one where we launched a zero knowledge chain. And look, I just think it takes much longer to deploy cryptography when there's billions and billions of dollars on the line. Hundreds of trillions of dollars on the line. Right. And so we need tangible things like hey, what are the signature schemes, what are the trade offs? How do we test these, how do we know they work? Have we put up a bug bounty to ensure that they're secure? Do we have testnets running? Are wallets ready? Have we migrated custody infrastructure? Because all of these things are going to be at play. And this was honestly the reason I started Project 11. I've seen how successful bitcoin has been at being globally adopted and blockchains generally. And I also know how complex it is to basically get these systems off the ground. And what it is going to take effectively because the foundation of these systems could be potentially destroyed by a quantum computer is kind of relaunching them. And it's that level of effort and therefore I think we need to, we need to all demand that level of seriousness and not just accept. And this is maybe the thing I'll be, I'll be most pointed about not just accept a lot of the kind of the responses here, which is we're working on it, it's like working on it meaning what? Like exactly should draw the line A to B and give me a timeline when this thing's going to be quantum scale.
- [32:34]
A
Yeah. And really so like I have to say, so I'm a guy who believes in strong opinions loosely held. When I first heard about quantum from the last couple years I was like man, yeah. But now it's time to take notice. I think it's very clear and like, you know, whether it's and who cares if it's 20, 29 or 20, you know, 37. What, 20, whatever year it's coming, who cares?
- [32:59]
B
Yeah, and look, I think quantum computers will exist.
- [33:03]
A
Can we say that? I mean, is that fair to say?
- [33:04]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, there are, there is a small, small minority of people that claim that they won't ever exist at the scale of threat in Bitcoin. And look, we don't have one today, so you can't fully rule out that they can't exist. But look, every year, every paper, every development that happens in quantum computing makes that position harder and harder to hold, right? So again, this is science. So who knows, maybe things will change and we'll all have new information next month or next week. I mean, at this rate, maybe tomorrow. But yeah, I think it's better to be safe than sorry here. And there's just no question we need to be ready. And this is like, look, I mean, Bitcoin wants to be digital gold. We all expect these assets to replace this financial system that stood the test of time for hundreds of years. In the case of gold, tens of thousands of years. And so it just seems to me a no brainer that we should make this change and make the system and these systems future proof.
- [33:53]
A
Totally agree. And now for the most important topic. What do you think Trump's going to talk about at 9 o' clock tonight? You can get right now that he'll say 6, 7 during his speech at 5%.
- [34:04]
B
Oh man, my kids will be very psyched if he does. I don't know. Based on recent history, I assume he's going to say that we won the Iran war or we're going to win shortly or it's going to be over soon. That would probably be my three guesses of what people say.
- [34:18]
A
What about we're putting in boots on the ground so that it will be over soon and then markets react and then he says April fools.
- [34:25]
B
No, I'm actually, I'll take a strong opinion on that. He won't say it because, I mean, he doesn't want to telegraph it. Right. He's going to, he'll, he maybe do it and then he'll talk about, about it after. But that would be, I, I don't feel like it's his style to say he's gonna do it. He just might do it. Just like, you know, the Maduro thing he just did, that was totally untelegraphed and then it happened.
- [34:43]
A
So you think I'll say God, three times?
- [34:48]
B
No, I don't know, 50. 50 feels like a coin flip there for a move. Feels like 80.
- [34:52]
A
Fake news.
- [34:53]
B
24.
- [34:54]
A
He's gonna say fake news.
- [34:57]
B
I'm kind of surprised Hormuze is only 83. That kind of feels low.
- [35:02]
A
Does that. I guess that's. If he's like hormuz, does it count? Never know. You never know, man. That's really great. Thank you. Like I said to you kind of before this show, we rarely, except for on Sundays when it's recorded, do like a single topic conversation on a weekday. But this one felt very pointed and we had the opportunity to talk to you very much in the trenches, so to speak, to use that cool crypto language on this. So I hope that people found it really interesting and it's very educational for me because, you know, I'm one first to admit when something's way over my head. And so I'm really trying to deeply understand it. And I think, you know, at this point, the most obvious response is just be ready for it. Whether you believe it or not. Seems so obvious.
- [35:51]
B
Yeah. To me. You know, and hopefully people come around to it and look, I believe we can solve this. Right. So let's just end an optimistic note. Like we are still at the point. It's not too late. We can solve it. So let's do it.
- [36:00]
A
I wish I could just see Baron Trump's Poly Market account. Exactly what you're going to say. Where can people follow you after this and check out everything Project 11 is doing?
- [36:10]
B
Cool. Well, they can probably look on X and there's probably a lot of people saying mean things about me, so it wouldn't. Shouldn't be too hard to sleuth it out. But at a prudence 08 is is my handle on X. Project11.com is company's main page. We have a blog too. I've got a lot of writing on that. I try, by the way, like just I didn't introduce myself, but I'm not a physicist. I am interested in cryptography, but I was a former army infantryman. I'm not like, you know, a 500 IQ guy either, but I tried in some of the writing I do on both my. My X account and also on our blog. You know, I try and break this down in ways that hopefully people, you know, educated layperson could understand. So I hope that's a resource people find useful as well.
- [36:48]
A
Deeply appreciate it, deeply appreciate your work and I'm glad that you're getting the attention now that it deserves because this is clearly going to be a long conversation. Yep.
- [36:56]
B
Let's get started and let's make bitcoin post quantum.
- [37:00]
A
All right, man. Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure having you. Everybody else, I'll be back tomorrow, 9:00am Eastern Standard Time. Have a good one, man. Peace.
- [37:07]
B
Awesome. Great to be here. Thanks. That's dope. Long drive ahead.
- [37:29]
A
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- [37:36]
B
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- [37:39]
A
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