Quantum Mechanics for Bitcoiners

                                                    A cool way to wait for NGU

Bitcoiners should learn quantum mechanics as they wait for NGU.

Because quantum mechanics will learn about Bitcoin.

Hola, Welcome to August!

Since my top post on HackerNoon last month, I have been grinding gears to up the ante in my technical skills a la Quantum Computing, running on the heels of the highly prestigious Womanium Global Quantum and Entrepreneurship program.

Sorry, I’ve kept you waiting but today, I will gladly (briefly) share with you my milestones.

To start, I was awarded the Womanium Scholarship. It went for $900. Although, I didn’t believe it till I met with daily 2-hour graduate-level lectures from 14 prestigious quantum computing companies who have all secured tens of millions of dollars in round 1, round 2, … funding.

The content was detailed, and my mind went a spinning with neutral atoms, quantum dots, Rydberg states, holomorphic states, and “squeezed light”.

But I soon found my ground and breezed through the 20+ quizzes. Those certificates will be bagged.

Cap it with the Career Fair in which we were given a chance to pitch for jobs from all of these companies, and well, what can I say? This Womanium course is great!

However, while studying all that, I happened to also get started on this great idea to explore the mutual benefits between Bitcoin and Quantum Computing. The idea was formed even before the Womanium course had started but 7 of the currently 8-person team I have all came from Womanium.

Together, we have successfully;

1. Modeled Bitcoin’s supply equation with 5 qubits.

   
   

   FYI, 5 qubits could be 5 neutral atoms or 5 (spin) electrons. Goes to show just how powerful a quantum computer is. 5 classical bits on 5 transistors can absolutely NOT model this equation. Even if a transistor today is really tiny (with billions fitting on thumbnail-sized chips), it still makes use of thousands of electrons. What a waste of electrons 🙂.

   
   

2. Created a simple quantum secure communication protocol using Qiskit for transferring a Bitcoin public key (or private key) from one person to another.

   
   

   This greatly helps with “proof of reserves” without any money actually having to move. This might come in handy, in the near future, to transfer Bitcoin keys between parties and not real bitcoins especially when the network traffic is incredibly high and the transactions fees in sats/vb are looking scammy. The Bitcoin lightning network sort of does this already since settlements are made without actual settlements on the layer 1 blockchain, but that is a story for another time.

   
   

3. Gotten the idea to write a book! (cover picture).

   
   

4. Gotten the idea to translate the (Classical) Bitcoin blockchain and its Lightning Network into its Quantum Blockchain Equivalent.

   
   

   
   

   

Teaching Quantum Mechanics to Bitcoiners

I know this is not a 100% Bitcoin space but after last year’s SEC ruling deeming Bitcoin a commodity, you have got to take your hat off for this orange cryptocurrency. It deserves an encore.

I know, I know. Bitcoiners shill the thing a damn lot. So much it hurts the ears of many an innovator in the blockchain space. Also, some are #toxic. However, as we all understand, the concept of money was devised to minimize the complexities of pricing in various alternative stores of value. This unlocks exponential efficiencies in recording, communicating, and working with pricing information done in terms of one special good we all call money.

So having a proliferation of cryptocurrencies means the competition is going to be really skewed toward one winner (Pareto has nothing to do with this one). Otherwise, that’s like saying Barter trade was a smarter play. And we all know what mathematics says about that.

Anyhow, not to get too much in the faces of Ethereum fans, Solana fans, et al., we all know that the greatest asset any cryptocurrency holder has is their cryptocurrency. The keys to this cash could be their greatest secret in fact. So the fast-approaching ability of quantum algorithms like Shor’s algorithm to crack RSA encryption and similar technologies (ECC) means a cryptocurrency holder, Bitcoiner to be precise, is going to be the one person who is most interested in learning how to build/leverage quantum-resistant encryption technologies. But, before one learns how to stop anything, one needs to learn how it works. And that is how the idea for a book – Quantum Mechanics for Bitcoiners – was born.

Now, the final milestone came just yesterday when I pitched the idea for a course explaining Shor’s algorithm in detail to Bitcoiners and drum roll, I got a student!

So I will say, I have officially launched my course – Shor’s Algorithm for Bitcoiners – as a first step towards writing ‘Quantum Mechanics for Bitcoiners’.

Shilling Bitcoin x Quantum Computing

Shill (verb) – to sing a thing’s praises. Obviously for your own benefit.

Bitcoin x Quantum Computing seems totally new, but that is only the computing in quantum computing. Bitcoin is currently running on the insights of quantum mechanics uncovered in the 20th century (in the first quantum revolution) such as the quantized energy levels of atoms, energy wells for quantum particles, and quantum tunneling. All these three currently play a role in each and every single transistor operating in the world, and this is crucial because it is transistors, more than any other electronic component, that put the “oo” in the oomph behind CPUs, GPUs, TPUs, FPGAs.

We also got lasers and atomic clocks.

To reiterate, the difference between quantum computing and classical technologies leveraging quantum mechanics is that in quantum computing, we are working with individual quantum particles. Turns out Schrödinger thought it was impossible.

This unlocks capabilities impossible in the classical realm such as superposition and entanglement. For all their tininess and super speed, classical transistors can only mimic quantum interference where they do analog processing using wave-like properties. But superposition and entanglement, remain supremely quantum powers. Why, classical transistors are working with a collection of quantum particles, i.e., a cascade of electrons. When bunched together, the magical capabilities of individual particles disappear.

The unique idea is to work with the second quantum revolution currently underway by finding ways to leverage superposition and entanglement in getting insights into Bitcoin. Because transistors are getting down to being as small as a few atoms in size, Moore’s law is reaching its limits, and therefore systems that make use of quantum particles with their full range of powers (Quantum Computers) are the next big thing to work on. And Bitcoin is well-suited to benefit because it is one computationally-hungry computer network asking for Mooore.

The use cases are simply fascinating. Bitcoin in particular promises financial sovereignty to anybody, individually, hence truly democratizing financial opportunity. Unlike the case where the world is on a dollar standard and the USA is in the grand position of getting financing opportunities first (because US dollars are owned by the USA. Duh).

Bitcoin’s use of the cheapest energy sources means it puts pressure on humans to innovate cheap energy sources with low carbon footprints. E.g. using flared methane and methane released during oil mining instead of simply blowing it into the atmosphere where it causes a 25x bigger greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.

Now quantum computing is well positioned to answer questions such as “Where is methane sneakily escaping into the atmosphere” for example using quantum sensing which can non-invasively explore underground methane deposits with high precision.

This computing could also assist in the recovery of lost bitcoins trapped in outdated legacy wallets, including the elusive Satoshi's bitcoins. This approach avoids resorting to hacking newer, more secure Segwit wallets or any potential super-wallet formats that may emerge in the future.

There is a lot of valuable crypto treasure lost in cyberspace, and it will be the Quantum Computer’s job to dig it out for us.

TLDR; There is buried treasure in cryptocurrency cyberspace, energy efficiency space, medical drug space, network effects space, … basically, Hilbert space.

So Bitcoin x Quantum Computing = Billion and Billions and …

Final Thoughts

Thank you and have a good time. Remember to stack your cash/bitcoins. Might be announcing the IPO for my start-up real soon.

Let me know what you think in the comments.