This is a clip from The Breakdown newsletter. To read the full editions, Subscribe.
“The money has been transformed into a simulacrum of what it once was, which is merely an obligation on the part of the counterparty to perform bookkeeping functions.”
— Stefano Giugioso, Quantitative money
in Star Trekit took only seconds to travel from the Starship Enterprise down to a nearby planet.
All the crew members had to do was enter the transporter, which would convert them into a pattern of energy (accurate to the quantum level) and take them to a target location where the energy would be converted back into matter so the person could be reassembled.
But is the person who shines up the same person who shines down?
The official in-universe answer is that they are the same thing. They say that the awareness of the transferred crew members remains constant, thanks to the completion of the quantitative-level survey and reconstruction of the tanker.
As evidence of this, they cite crew members who claim to be in transit.
But we have since learned how transport works at the quantum level, and that’s not all.
In quantum teleportation, first Discovered in 1993The only thing that is transmitted instantaneously is information.
Teleporting, for example, a qubit requires the destruction of the original quantum state of that qubit: under the laws of physics, collecting precise information about the quantum state leads to the collapse of its superposition, thus destroying it.
But the information collected as classical data (the ones and zeros) can then be sent via a satellite or fiber-optic cable and then, thanks to the magic of entanglement physics, reassembled (from other particles) at its destination.
So the troubling fact is that the transporter on the Starship Enterprise could only function by killing its occupants – the crew member who was sent down was not the one who returned to the top.
This has some science fiction implications for the future of money.
In banking, the way money is “sent” from Bank A to Bank B is that Bank A subtracts a number in its spreadsheet and sends a message to Bank B asking it to add the same number to its own.
Only the message is sent, not the money – that’s why we need banks: to send messages to each other about our money.
with Quantitative moneyHowever, money sends its own messages.
Quantum money is the idea that value can be represented by the quantum state of a particle and exchanged via quantum teleportation.
“The most important thing to understand here is that quantum (money) acts like a resource, not like data.” Fabrizio Genovese He explained in an email.
Where a bank deposit is information about money and Bitcoin is a consensus ledger representing money, quantum money would be money itself – an uncopyable atom, photon or molecule. He is money.
Not data about money, but about the physical resources of money.
This has a benefit because it will allow funds to be secured and transferred according to the laws of superposition, entanglement, and the unbreakable non-cloning theorem.
In other words, physics may one day do what databases and distributed ledgers do now, but without the database or distributed ledger.
Quantum money thus has the self-retaining properties of physical money: you can keep qubits of money in a device in the same way you keep cash in your pocket.
This would make the exchange of funds completely permissionless (no need for an intermediary) and completely private (no record of transactions).
But quantum money will have it too Removable Characteristics of digital money: Destroying money on your device creates the transmittable information needed to recreate it on another device, no matter how far away.
(There is a moment in which the quantum state does not exist, which is transmitted as classical data, which proves that Star Trek The carrier is truly a suicide machine.)
Sending quantum money would be like sending physical cash through the mail. But even better, because it arrives instantly.
Sending money over long distances created the need for banks, but the solution to this problem led to the emergence of middlemen who now control almost all of our money.
Bitcoin is, of course, a way to make peer-to-peer transactions possible over long distances.
But quantum money will be the unstoppable way to do it.
“Blockchain transactions are not completely peer-to-peer,” says Stefano Giuggioso He says“Because there will always be some part of the mechanism that can prevent your transaction from being completed. For economic, political or technological reasons.”
Nothing will stop a quantitative transaction, for any reason.
However, there is one limitation: unlike Star TrekWhere Captain Kirk can send quantum money to a newly discovered planet, it can only be transferred to a device ready to receive it.
That device doesn’t exist yet, so quantum money isn’t feasible yet — we’re three or four years away from the first iteration, Gougeoso estimates.
However, when it arrives, it will be the safest way to send money.
Getting security from quantum states is like getting energy from the sun: “That’s what the universe gave us,” Genovese says.
As such, he predicts that all cybersecurity measures will eventually be implemented through quantum states, including money.
However, we still have to give value to this money, which may be the trickiest trick.
Building a bus to transport qubits is one thing; Convincing others to accept them as payment is another matter.
Get news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
