(CoinTelegraph) Jonathan Reichental discusses his interest in technology that is seen to be emerging five years, 10 years, 15 years and thinking about what it might mean for industry. And so, all along the way, Reichental identified technologies like quantum computing that are interesting that maybe a lot of people weren’t paying attention to before he did.
His radar was alerted by developments such as Google hitting a certain qubit milestone. More companies — whether D-Wave or Microsoft, Fujitsu or others — were starting to publish their positions on quantum and where they think it’s going. The real clincher was a book called “Hit Refresh,” where Satya Nadella — the book’s author and the CEO of Microsoft — is betting the future of Microsoft on three things: artificial intelligence, mixed realities and quantum.
A lot of people have identified quantum and blockchain as something worth exploring. He states the risk to blockchain from quantum in the short term is that there is no risk. If blockchain can be broken by quantum, all cryptography can be broken. And that’s a much bigger societal risk. Think about your bank, your browser, your smartphone or your laptop — computing has been integrated into all levels of our life. All those levels rely on existing cryptographic algorithms and are vulnerable in one way or another.
One of the promising aspects here is that quantum actually makes excellent cryptography. There’s a thing called quantum cryptography, and it’s very different from our understanding of how classical cryptography works. There is actually a silver lining — quantum cryptography is much more secure than our consumer-base-level cryptography in society today. We could see quantum cryptography be the answer and even be actually integrated into future versions of blockchain, making blockchain a quantum-based system itself.
there is very deep government involvement in developing quantum-based infrastructure, including most members of the G-20. There are a couple of ways to think about it: There are benefits to being the first and being the innovators.
Talking Digital Future: Quantum Computing, Blockchain & Cryptography
