Unchained - Q-Day Is Imminent. Can Bitcoin Survive the Quantum Threat?

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

Thank you to our sponsors! Walrus Post-quantum era focused blockchain builder Project Eleven has just raised $20 million from the industry's heavy hitters as concerns over Bitcoin's quantum readiness grow. In this Unchained podcast episode, Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden delves into the urgency of the quantum threat to Bitcoin while highlighting which other blockchains are most at risk. He also shares what Project Eleven is focused on to help crypto prepare and the potential outcomes. Listen to learn why Pruden believes implementing post-quantum cryptography would be the most significant upgrade blockchains have ever undergone and why a Bitcoin chain split is likely. Guests: Alex Pruden, CEO and Co-Founder of Project Eleven Links: Solana Deploys Post-Quantum Signatures on Testnet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I got into this problem because, you know, you're like, well, I'm not far as a way, but then you realize the scale of this, and you're like, oh, my God, it might already wait if we're starting now. Hi, everyone, look in the Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things, crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we get started, a quick reminder.

Nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guest tonight may hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures, visit Unchained Crypto.com. Today's guest is Alex Pruden, CEO and co-founder of Project 11. But before we continue, we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible, and I want to introduce you to our sponsor, Walrus, a project we actually use here at Unchained for data storage. Throughout the episode, you'll hear short excerpts from Rebecca Simons, managing executive at the Walrus Foundation.

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here with Alex Friedan, CEO and co-founder of Project 11. Welcome, Alex. It's a pleasure to be here, Laura. Thanks for having me. Nick Carter of Castle Island Ventures has been sounding the drum about the threat of quantum computing to Bitcoin in particular. Although this is probably at least a few years out, he makes a lot of valid points about how Bitcoin governance is extremely slow, and that means that developers should begin trying to come up with solutions to prevent issues now. Your company, Project 11, is focused on this. problem, not just for Bitcoin, but for all of crypto and blockchains. Before we get to what exactly

your company, Project 11, is working on, why don't you just start by explaining what quantum computing is and how that differs from current computing? Yeah, so it's a new computing paradigm, first of all, that's based on quantum mechanics, right, which is, you know, a branch of quantum physics that deals with very small. Quantum computing is special in terms of it, like from differentiating it from classical computing because it can do certain things that classical computers can't. So it uses the quantum mechanical position or principles of superposition, entanglement, for example, to basically use as building blocks for new types of algorithms that, for

example, can factor very large numbers much more quickly than a classical computer could. And in terms of what's relevant to cryptography, actually this problem of factoring large numbers for this algorithm for factoring large number is Shores algorithm is the algorithm that we would expect a quantum computer to run, and that would be the point at which quantum computing is cryptographically relevant, right? So effectively the way you can get,

there's many great videos on YouTube on this, and I encourage people to check them out, but at a very high level, you can sort of think of a quantum computer being able to parallelize the process of being able to factor a large number or solve a hard problem in a way that a classical computer simply cannot.

right? So that's that's quantum computing in a nutshell. It's why people are excited about it for many applications. But because this problem with factoring large numbers is the basis for security in many cryptographic algorithms, including the ones used in Bitcoin and all virtually are with a crypto network, this is why we have to consider it and worry about it as an industry. And when was you project that it would be a threat to Bitcoin and how reliable are the projections about when it will become a threat? Great question. And you can probably imagine I get this question all the thought. And look, full disclosure, I'm not a quantum physicist myself, right? And we have an advisor actually who, you know, is a quantum physicist

from Harvard. He's actually currently true. It wasn't Harvard and now as a Caltech. Right. So we talked to physicists working on quantum computing all the time. We talk to cryptographers all the time, many of whom, you know, are one known in space and, you know, advise projects. And they're, they're maybe closer to the pulse of kind of post-quantum cryptography. But look, if you, if you pull the audience among these experts, you'll get a giant range. of answers anywhere from two to three years to 30 to 50 years. I will say, so in short, I think it's hard to project. However, I think the uncertainty, and this is the second part of your question, how much uncertainty is there around this? I think there's an enormous

amount of uncertainty around this. One data point, though, and quite frankly, the thing that led me to want to start Project 11 that I find quite interesting is in the last year in particular, quantum Some physicists have gotten a lot more bullish about quantum computing and its timelines and whether or not it's going to be viable sooner rather than later. And you can just, for example, just read Scott Aronson's blog or John Preskell. John Prescott is a Caltech physicist. He's quite well known. You can just read the difference in what they put out even in the last few months until there's

been a change in their attitude towards this. To them, it is not just 20 years away and 20 years is a place holder for a long time. They see a sea change. And that was really driven by a year and a half. actually just about a year ago, Google released a chip called Willow. Some of your listeners may remember this news. But the key thing there was basically demonstrated that the science problem of coin computing had been solved. The engineering problem, though social substantial, was basically all that was left.

And now it's just a process of scaling that up. Now, how quickly will that happen? That's the million dollar question, right? But I think the reason why we started this is there's not a guarantee in this being Project 11. And there's not a guarantee that this doesn't actually happen sooner than people expect. And as you combine that risk, if things may be moving a little faster, like AI, for example, I think took everyone by surprise. Many disruptive in the technology in the past have commented people by surprise.

And if you combine that fact or that possibility with the fact that these are decentralized systems that secure an enormous amount of value that entirely rely upon this cryptography that will be broken, like those two things are facts. Bitcoin and all crypto networks rely on broken cryptographic algorithms, and quantum computing can break them. Like, we know those things, just a question of when. So I didn't give an answer. But I would say, generally speaking, what I tell people is it is not out of the realm of

possibility of this happens in the next five years. And even the fact that that's possible, I think is enough that as a conservative measure, we should prepare now. Yeah. Potentially even four years, I don't know, just from some conversations I was listening to, I was like, oh, they keep talking about 20. 30 and now that it's 2026, I was like, oh, that's, that's actually four years out. I just say one more piece on this.

This is important. I think, like, some people think there's going to be a long lead up where you're like, we're going to know it's four years out. If you just think about the capabilities of these systems and what they do, either they're going to be used for Estinage or someone is going to use them to recover loss of it, whatever, right? But bottom line is, wherever has the capability really has no incentive to share it, right, before they use it.

And so I think as we get closer and closer to these systems, more and more capable, I would fully expect us as a public to know less and less about what is the state of the art. So I think that's just an important fact to keep on for concept. Yeah. And there was a blog post that I quickly skimmed. It was obviously by somebody who's deep in the field. But basically, you know, the brief gist of it is they just talked about how quickly some of the quantum quantum capabilities are developing. And they said, you know, it's kind of like incremental, incremental, incremental, incremental, and then, boom, there's like a big leap. And so they were saying that, you know, it could seem like something that's further out

and that all of a sudden the timeline just jumps. So I did want to ask, you know, for this moment of the time when the quantum computing threat becomes real, what are all the ways in which Bitcoin could be harmed or broken or Bitcoin holders could be, you know, lose their money or, you know, have alarm? about their funds. Great. So the first thing I want to start is the preamble is we're going to talk about Bitcoin because you asked about it specifically.

All crypto networks use the same cryptography, but the risks do differ somewhat, right? For example, Bitcoin uses fruit of work versus per stake and there's nuance there. But let's talk about Bitcoin for a second. And then if you want, we can get into some of the other notes. Okay, so Bitcoin specifically. So actually, there's two categories of quantum attacks that could theoretically be relevant to Bitcoin. One is the attack that the target.

It's asymmetric cryptography. So these are the digital signatures that basically confer ownership. Like the only way actually we have a concept of ownership in the digital world is this concept of a digital signature. Like all the Bitcoin ledger really is is a record of who paid whom, when, and that who is the digital signature. I have the private key. Only I should be able to produce the digital signature. What Shores algorithm, one of the two relevant quantum algorithms does, is let me recover your private key from only the knowledge of your public key. And so I'm able to then sign for you, right?

Now, we'll come back to this because I think not all Bitcoin is vulnerable because people generally don't just display their public keys. Bitcoin addresses, in fact, are hash as a public keys. But that said, a significant amount of Bitcoin public keys are exposed. We'll come back to that in a minute, though. But I said something in the other category of attack that's relevant is an attack called Grover's algorithm. So Grover's algorithm is really just a quantum algorithm for unstructured search.

and it's a way that you could theoretically reduce the security of a hash function. Bitcoin uses hash function all over the place. I mentioned a second ago. It's how an address is basically created from a public key, you hash the public key. It's also, as many of your listeners are not aware, you did mining. That's basically all mining is, right? And so that is a category of attack. That said, this is the last time I'm going to mention Grover's algorithm because the performance boost you get

versus a classical GPU or classical machines from Grover's is just not that impressed. Quantum computers would truly have to be astronomical in size to make that attack relevant. So we don't focus on that. We don't think that's a short-term thread at all, Pructural. The short-term thread is Shores algorithm. And the reason it's the threat is because compared to the classical alternative, the GPUs trying to factor numbers. Shores is exponential in the advantage. So that means every basically additional qubit that you add to your quantum computer basically gets you almost another order of magnitude of speed up.

Right. So it's very, you can't just make your keys bigger. You can't, there's no easy way to mitigate that. Okay. So Bitcoin is, so effectively what I'm claiming is Bitcoin, the most vulnerable point of Bitcoin is really the, really the foundation, right? Which is this concept of ownership. Right. Okay. So who is now vulnerable? The question, well, it's anywhere that a public key is exposed. Maybe just as a point to make a comment of Bitcoin compared to other places where public key cryptography is used. Bitcoin is special because unlike, say, the web where we use public key cryptography, like a TLS connection to this website, like we authenticate and we authenticate, you know, via the certificate authority that you, you know, whoever owns this website is a real person, et cetera. Those are those public keys are typically ephemeral.

Like we create them in the session. They get destroyed later. And most usually public keys don't stay around forever. Blockchains, they stay around forever, right? Like this is a ledger. It's literally, you go back to the genesis. It's there. You can find the record of these things, right?

And so the long-lived nature of these public keys kind of makes blockchains especially vulnerable. In addition to the fact that it is the public key explicitly that secures an explicit amount of value. Compare this by like a bank account, for example, where, again, we can authenticate using public geography, but I don't know what's in the bank account. Whereas I can look at Satoshi's Bitcoin addresses. I know exactly what I'm going to make by attacking those things. So, okay, to conclude, the main area of concern is the public keys that are exposed on chain. That is approximately six, you know, it's like around 35 to 40 percent.

The number fluctuates. We have a risk list on our website. This includes Satoshi, right? Early Satoshi Bitcoin was mined to a pay-to-public key address so they were not hashed, as well as a lot of exchange wall, it's bridges, basically any business that has on-chain infrastructure where for a variety of reasons, they sort of have to sign twice to the same key. And so what you end up with is roughly a third or so of Bitcoin, of the total Bitcoin in circulation, so hundreds of billions of dollars, is exposed today to a quantum

computer. And that represents arguably the biggest, you know, cybersecurity honeypot that's ever existed. And actually, I'm so sorry. I didn't understand this because I guess I would have thought, so the public key is, you know, where anybody would send the coins, right? So then on any block explorer showing all the Bitcoin transactions, you know, going back to January of 2009, then wouldn't every single address that held Bitcoin be visible and easily scrape on the block? So I don't understand why you're saying only 30%. Great. This is, okay, so great.

Let's unpack why. So because in Bitcoin, what we tip. So, okay, so actually, this isn't like a new realization. People realize this was a problem 10 years ago when they were thinking about quantum and other things. Privacy was another consideration. And so what an address type got added, which was paid to public key hash. And so Satoshi's early coins that were mine, were all paid to public key, which was the original thing that supported, but kind of the de facto

way that people were encouraged to spend Bitcoin on the line was as pay to public key hash. Because Bitcoin is a UTIPSO system. You spend from one address. I send something you say, and then I send the remainder, it does the remainder, does it stay in that address? It goes to a new address that I control, right? So this is the whole point of higher P data derivation. So really when I'm spending on Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a UTIBs-O-based system, even though I'm spending, if I have good wallet hygiene, I'm only using the address. once, right? And so for people that have basically had wallets and or, you know, follow this, these practices themselves, they're not actually exposed to a quantum computer. And a lot of wallets

enforce this, right? So contrast this. I'm just briefly contrast this to a system like Ethereum, where Ethereum has accounts. We don't have UTXOs. There's actually accounts. There, technically, your address is hidden by a hash too. But as you point out, because it's account based, really the second you do anything on Ethereum, you've exposed yourself. And so we don't have a tracker for Ethereum, but the vast majority of Ethereum on chain is exposed. So does that make sense? Does that? Oh, okay. I'm so sorry. So when you said 30% that wasn't only Bitcoin, that was all, all. No, no, no, no. So that 30% number is, 30% of all Bitcoin is under public keys that have been exposed, either because they were under the P2PK address type,

or someone spent twice from the same address, whether you're not supposed to. But people do. And let me just give you an example why people would. Exchanges are very often exposed wall. Why is an exchange money you have to sign twice? Well, you have to deposit. You want to deposit Bitcoin to sell it, say, right?

And you save that address that they give you into your wall. Because you don't want to write it down. You don't want to write it on. You don't want to screw it up. Well, now the exchange to get your money out has to sign again from that same address. Right. So that's how they end up how to expose them themselves. Bridges have the same problem.

Right? Where do you tell people what's on their money? You don't want to give them a different address. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess I'm so sorry, I do believe for this. But so with the UTXO model, then what happens is you, you know, send to wherever, you know, whatever address the recipient is. And then the remainder goes somewhere else. But aren't both of those addresses visible on a block explore? That's why I don't understand why you're- Yes. Yes, the addresses are visible. The addresses are all. always visible. And maybe I didn't explain it to the addresses are always visible. The addresses themselves are not vulnerable. But when you send from a given address, you need someone to be able to verify your signature. That signature verification requires you to expose the public key, the raw public key. A raw connection. When you send, then you're exposed. Okay, sorry. I probably should have mentioned that very key fact. Okay. Now I understand. Before we built Walrus, what we heard a lot from developers was the need for speed and we headed ourselves. So reads and writes are extremely fast on

Warris and this means that apps don't lag even with really large files. Privacy was another thing that we heard a lot about and Warris lets developers encrypt data without primitive called seal and with that you have full control over who access your data and everything is enforced on chain. And this enables these really incredible use cases that haven't been possible before. Everything from more reliable AI models to data markets where users can monetize their data. So if you put this all together, what this actually means that the developers can finally build apps and they feel web too fast, but you've got Web 3 level guarantees. So we're going to talk about the threat to these other blockchain. So go ahead, Alex, tell us of the other chains, you know, as you mentioned, so Bitcoin

does proof of work and then we also have proof of state coins. You know, we have the UTX model. We have account based. So amongst all the different chains, which types of chains are most at risk and break it out into risk for technical reasons and cultural reason. Great. The simple way to think about this is Bitcoin is kind of the least at risk for technical reasons. but the most at risk because the value is highest, and culturally it's very decentralized, quite frankly. So it's hard to solve this problem. We've seen Bitcoin ossify.

Other chains are kind of more at risk technically. I guess to be specific about what I'm saying is on average more of the total supply, the public key for that is exposed. Like I said, the Ethereum account model, very often you expose the public key. Solana, for example, which is a ecosystem we've done some work with, there, the ad, the address is just the raw public key. So there's no like everything, 100% of Solana is vulnerable, theoretically. Now, on the cultural side, there's an advantage in the Salana ecosystem that I guess

theoretically there's a foundation, people kind of look to them, what do they do, there's fewer nodes. You could argue it's less decentralized. I'm sure that's like a big rabbit hole. We may not want to get down on this podcast. But anyway, the point being is probably it's a little bit simpler for them to do at least coordinate. It doesn't get it's going to be simple to fix. but it does mean it's potentially easier to coordinate a fix.

Whereas I think with Bitcoin, it's probably easier to fix, technically, but much harder to coordinate. And even in the cases where I say easy to coordinate, I want to make sure I'm like, it's important to clarify here, any of these ecosystems that go through this change, which by the way, they will all have to be worth anything and, you know, at the end of the day, this is by far the biggest effort. the most significant upgrade, any of these things will ever go.

And I want to explain why. This is not a situation where ETH one goes to ETH two, where I, you know, as an EF holder, I basically just went to bed and I woke up one day and I'm like, oh, okay, proof of steak is happening and this all seems great. I still have my ETH that's in the same place. I didn't have to worry about it. In this case, protocols all have to add support for new post-quant cryptography. And there's consequences to that.

These algorithms are very different than what we have. we can come back to that. But the protocols have to do a fix. A. Then all the value, everything, has to move. So wherever you're holding your Bitcoin currently, you will send it somewhere. You have to. Your ETH account has to move.

By the way, all smart contracts. If there's any kind of verification logic that uses old BCC keys, which you should read that as stable coin contracts with admin keys. They all have to get before. So this is the way I like me like to term this is full lifting ship. every protocol must migrate to new photography. Every smart contract must get re-appoid. Every single asset across every single chain

must move from where it currently is to where it's going. So that's why people are like, oh, you want me to or tap root, you know. Honestly, those are bad cons. Like that's maybe half of the work in the best case scenario. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Just hearing that and thinking about how, you know,

when defy contracts get upgraded or even, yeah, looking at things like, you know, back in Ethereum's history, the Dow, just so much money gets left behind. So, okay, wow. All right. This is, you know, by the way, just quickly on the, on the Bitcoin side, this is why, this is one of the cultural issues that's dairy hard. So, too, she's sick. And we can come back. Maybe maybe I'll just mention this. It's like, what do you do with the coins are left behind? It's fascinating. I mean, all of these ecosystems, it's a huge deal. So now I guess you can tell why I got into this problem because, you know, you're like, you're like, Kwanam how far as a way, but then you realize the scale of this,

you know, like, oh my God, it might already too late. if we're starting now. Yes, yes, which is what Nick Carter was saying. And a lot of people were kind of dismissing the urgency. But I was convinced, not that I, you know, did a ton of research, but I just understanding the Bitcoin community and how it works and just the nature of, you know, how quickly this technology is progressing. And in like a leap sort of fashion, all of those factors. I just thought, wow. Okay. So we haven't talked about your company yet, Project 11. congratulations. You just announced that you raised $20 million from Nick Castle's, sorry, Nick Carter's Castle Island Ventures, as well as Coinbase Ventures, Variant Fund,

Bologousarney, Boston, a host of other funds. And you are focused on building quantum resilient cryptographic infrastructure that helps blockchains migrate before the threat is real. So explain, you know, what that means and how you're doing that. Great. Yeah. So as hopefully your listeners have kind of been able to put together over the course of this of this stream, there's a lot of aspects of this. Like there's a protocol layer thing, but there's importantly, I think this user assets all need to move, right? And so for us, one of the big things that we see no one tackling at all is figuring

out, hey, basically everybody is currently on an island. It's classical cryptography secured. And there needs to be a new island we all go to. So there needs to, someone needs to like have this island needs to exist and there needs to be a bridge to it. Right. And so this is the analogy I like to use a lot. like we're building the place where you put your assets that is secure post-Q-day.

We use the term Q-day for the day that a cryptographically relevant quantum appear becomes real. And there needs to be a bridge or a path or migration protocol to get you there. So we've actually shipped part of the bridge for Bitcoin, at least. We have a product called Yellow Pages. So Yellow Pages.x, Y, Z. People can check it out. What that is is basically it's a tool that lets you generate a new post-quant key pair. These key pairs are not recognized within Bitcoin yet. And, you know, we hope at some point that standard will be recognized.

But the key piece is you sign a digital signature using your new post quantum key pair. And then you sign another message using your Bitcoin public key. And what you have is an attestation that today, at this point, a quant, like you are the owner of said Bitcoin, right? So you're attesting that you own this asset in a way that could not be forged by a quantum computer, right? So Yellow Pages was a proof of concept that we shipped. But I think it demonstrates effectively what everyone is going to have to do for a migration. So that's the bridge piece, right? The next step, more focusing on what, you know, with the money be raised from Nick and other folks who participate in the series A is building effectively infrastructure, wallet type infrastructure, where you're able to secure assets today.

And, you know, independent of protocol migration timelines, but secure those assets in a way, your assets, but in a way that it's quantum, post-quant, I'm secure. So applying post quantum cryptography at the wallet level effectively. And then hopefully when enough people start doing that, we'll be able to start integrating that cryptography into various protocols. But the protocol migration process has to be measured and deliberate. And of course, like to take Bitcoin, for example, it's very disorganized, decentralized, we'll say. Right.

So that's a slow burn. You don't want to rush that either, right? Because there's a lot of consequences. You mentioned the Dow hack. That was a hack. I guess someone made a mistake is maybe the better way to put it. right and that's a huge risk here and Justin Daler from A16 Z we've got them back and forth on this and he sees the bigger risk of people applying post-quantarthropy wrong and then that's the real threat and I think that's he's not wrong and highlighting that is a problem so that's the order in which we kind of aim to do is figure out a migration to work protocol get people to place where their assets can be stayed and then ultimately work with the various protocols and providers out there to make their protocol you know make them post-climate secure okay but yeah I guess the risk is is, you know, so people, people can do this, you know, to try to hedge against the risk.

But then there is still the risk that, for instance, Bitcoin doesn't end up adopting whatever technology scheme is behind yellow pages to protect against quantum. So it's like they can do all they want to try to prevent it. But ultimately, some portion of it is out of the hands of your company. Okay. Got it. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I wish that weren't true. but I also am happy that it is true, right?

Because we're building decentralized. I'm a big believer in the importance of decentralization. We could just ship everything. I mean, this is why Google is not really a problem for Google, right? They can just ship all this stuff and it's over. That said, I think I want to differentiate between Bitcoin and some other ecosystems, specifically smart contract blockchains. It's actually possible to implement post-quantum cryptography at the wallet or smart contract

level in a one chain like Ethereum or Solana or any of these kind of more smart contract chains because they're just more expressive. You're absolutely right, though, in Bitcoin's case, Bitcoin as a protocol, kind of has to adopt this. So this is why when you ask me technically versus culturally, which is easier, there are many facets. It's very hard to really kind of unpack all of them. But I would just say, like for us, an area that we're focused on is the blockchains that have our contract functionality. You can actually, it's possible secure assets today, even if a post-quite, even if a quantity would hear existed. So that's a big focus.

Okay. And so one thing that I am not sure I fully understand is once the true quantum threat is here, as far as I understand it, maybe I'm wrong, the way that that happens, there's kind of multiple avenues. So how is it that solutions created today before that threat exists can be tested and be known to be secure before that happens? You just ask one of the deepest philosophical questions about cryptography generally, right? Like how do we know any of this is secure? I mean, the answer is we kind of don't, really, right? You know, I won't get into theoretical computer science or the science. But the point being is generally speaking. So first off, what is true? We know that Shores algorithm breaks elliptic curves, digital signatures, and RSA and things like it.

So things that are based on similar assumptions, because we know that is broken. Now, that doesn't preclude a quantum computer from being able to break what we think is post-quantum secure. So there's post-quantum algorithms that are based on like a subset of problems called lattices, for example. There's also post-quantum signature algorithms that are based on hash functions. I mentioned Grovers is an attack on hash functions. There's no guarantee that someone in 10 years won't discover a new attack. And by the way, this is actually an important point to mention a philosophy for when we're designing these new systems that people are putting their assets in. we should not be satisfied with having a new cryptographic standard that we just assume is going to be set for all time.

It will certainly, if you just look at the history of cybersecurity, it will certainly be the case that one or more of all of our assumptions or our assumptions will be wrong. And people will need to migrate. Potentially people will need to migrate again, right? So imagine lattices I remember a second ago. Imagine you build a wallet based on lattices. Latus isn't up being broken, maybe classically, not even quantumly. People have to move to hash base. The infrastructure that we build to truly be future-proofed needs to be what is termed agile, right?

So you need to be able to switch quickly. And we need to build in these pathways. I gave this analogy of a bridge. That bridge, you should think of there as an emergency exit for your walls. There needs to be an emergency exit. But in the case of a hack or some big thing that no one expected, a black swan call it, people can make their fun safe with it. No one has built that way up to this point.

But I think going forward, it will be critical that the whole space to the extent we take ourselves seriously and actually want to be the future of financed, we build those systems that way. And I was curious. You know, we talked about the differences between the different chains, both on a technical side and the cultural side. But are there any chains that you feel are a better position than others right now? I think I would, you know, look, really one has started, I think is the answer to address this. That said, I think I would highlight the work that's being done at the Ethereum Foundation. And people who have been following recently, Vitalik's comments, I mean, the Talix view is that, hey, we need to make Ethereum be centralized. That's a little bit orthogical. But like, he also believes it like it needs to be it.

We need to build for the 100 years. And the 100 years in his mind is like post-quant cryptography. We need to go over that in now. So their lean roadmap integrates this. And, you know, we work with Justin, some other folks there to kind of help them inspect that. I mean, the war work is just beginning there. So I don't want to like overstated. but I definitely think that they, in terms of their attitude,

and what they've done so far to drive consensus among the community members and stakeholders there has been very impressive. Salana, too, I mean, we work with them. I think they're also starting to wake up to this. And increasingly, I think people are starting to wake up to this, and it's great. You know, Bitcoin's always one of those places where the best and worst thing about it is it's very centralized. And I think there are many people that still don't take this threat as seriously as they should, in my opinion.

But I will say it's been encouraging in the last year. We've gone from like quantum computing is not real to quantum computing is not to worry about now. So I do add it as progress. I'm like, okay, great. We're moving from here to here. And maybe next year we'll, you know, be even one step further than that. We're building stuff. And what other types of products are you thinking about building?

And, you know, do you have business models in mind for how you can make money from your products? Yeah, look. So at the very high level, the business question of Project 11, like the venture opportunity, we have an entire ecosystem that I haven't checked prices, but I don't know, $3.2 trillion worth of assets that is theoretically zero if this project is not, or if this problem is not solved. So Project 11's value, I sort of see it somewhere between the zero and three point two trillion. And obviously we're not the alone. We're going to do this, et cetera, but that, like, I think that's the total addressful market.

Now, there's many ways that we could potentially address this, right? So, I mean, and I guess I'll just say that we don't have, I mean, I think in terms of how we make money, there's many possible ways we could. We haven't really decided which of those to go down. But I think the opportunities will be limitless. And again, like I said, going back to what I said earlier, it's full looking ship. Every asset, every wallet, every smart contract, every custody solution, it all has to turn over. And so, you know, for us, our goal is to really build the fundamental standards that the, define the foundations of the digital financial rails of the future.

I believe two things. I believe, A, blockchains will become the basis of all finance. I just think for a variety. I believe that for a variety of reasons. And I think blockchains to be durable need post quantum cryptography applied. And by the way, this is an important point to mention. Quantum computers also offer a lot of really cool primitives that we can apply to these blockchain-based systems.

I'll give one quick example, quantum T distribution, which is a concept where you and I, I can share a key or wallet without actually ever transmitting it over the internet or a network, right? We can use quantum, the quantum phenomenon of entanglement. That's a whole new paradigm. You can imagine that being a part of a future protocol or different types of randomness generation, et cetera. So again, our goal is to build the financial rails of future, blockchain-based, post-quorum secure, at, you know, starting with the user assets and working our way up. So I didn't answer your question very well.

I didn't answer your question. But to us, I think the opportunity is very big. And how does you come to sound the company? Yeah. So I was at previously, first I was in the Army, I got interested in crypto in the Army. Then I was an investor 8016. And then I was at another project called Aalio in the privacy space, left that. And then I was thinking about what to do.

And Google Willow happened. And because I'm passionate about this technology and I saw Willow and I started thinking, I started thinking all in the lines of exactly this conversation. I'm like, oh, my God, someone needs to do something about this. You know, because I'm passionate about blockchains and decentralized blockchains in particular. And to me, I just didn't think enough people or really anyone was paying attention to this problem. And yeah, that's what led me to get out of my chair and my break between companies, much to my wife's chagrin, and get back on the cold under train. Alchemy is one of Morris's many great partners.

They're an advertising platform. Every click and impression is recorded on chain. They're live. They've got great clients. Coca-Cola is one of them. they're already processing more than 25 million ad impressions a day. And by building on Sue and Walrus, Alchemy's clients get two really big advantages. So the first one is cost saving and the second one is full transparency over their spend.

The real-time visibility they get allows their clients to make really fast decisions, do very effective A-B testing and truly understand their ROI. and anything that involves money like defy, this auditability, not only is it super important, but is actually a legal requirement in many places. And being able to prove what happened and that what you're saying has happened hasn't been edited or massaged in any way.

Well, it's really important for detail today, but to be honest, it's only going to become more and more important as this industry grows and more value is pushed through blockchains. So I did want to circle back to the Satoshi's Bitcoin's question. So yeah, I'd love to end on that just hear kind of what the challenges are and what you think could be some of the scenarios of what could play out. Okay, yeah.

I saved the best one for last. The spicy one for last. Another question right. Yeah, so let me just frame it so everyone understands. The majority or all of Satoshi's Bitcoins. I mean, of course, here we're speculating, right? We assume, you know, Satoshi was one person and Satoshi is gone. But like, okay, the broad, you know, the broad notion of Satoshi, you know, they are the founder of Bitcoin who may or may not be alive.

Many addresses associated with him, her, or them are exposed. Right. They were early mining rewards and the public he is exposed. And so people can assume those are lost. And I'm sure there's others that are lost too, right? but people often use this as the example. And so in total, I think I don't, I don't remember the number off the top of my head,

but I lose about $150 billion worth of assets that could be gotten by a quantum computer. And so there's a question. There's really only free options. What do you do? So quantum computer comes along. What happens these 150 billion? Well, they don't, I mean, if it's true that Satoshi is not alive, they are not alive, then you can't migrate them.

They're there. Right. So the quantum computer could just get them, right? So that's like, you know, maybe you add a new address site, but you don't burn to those and the quantum computers gets them. And I guess they're a big big, you know, they're the next micro strategy or whatever, right? They've got all the stores to go. So you can let the quantum computer get them. You can proactively decide to burn them.

Like the community could come together and be like, hey, these things should be destroyed because if, let's imagine, I don't know, burgeti, I just picked a random quantum competing company. They get these and what are they going to do? Well, they're the public company. They're going to sell them all so they can make profits and that's bad to the price. So people maybe would say, hey, this isn't really good. we should burn this. The third thing you could do is figure out, okay, look, we're not going to burn it,

but maybe we'll put them into mining rewards in 2100. So that way, like, you know, make it more sterile. So you could reallocate is really the third option. So it's basically let quantum computers steal, burn or reallocate. Those are your only three options. And this is a massively divisive issue within the Bitcoin community, as you can imagine, because people feel very passionately. I mean, Bitcoin was founded on this concept of no arbitrary,

seizure, right? Like, you're not your keys, not your crypto. So this, this idea of burning or reallocating, I think it's very, very offensive to some people in that community. On the other hand, if you talk to some of the more, I would say, markets oriented actors, micro strategy, you know, ETF issuers, people who are kind of exposed at the price tanks overnight, they, I think, are incentivized to think differently. They're like, ah, is it really so bad if you just burn the ones we know are gone. This is going to be a very divisive issue. My personal belief is, I mean, unless this is resolved, there will be a fork over these two things.

Because I, you know, yeah, I think these are very different views of what Bitcoin should be. And when you have that in a blockchain-based system, I mean, a lot of times this is what you say. So it'll be very interesting. Yeah. Just hearing you say all this, I think about back in the day when I used to write about the block size wars, and I would go. call it like Bitcoin Civil War or whatever. I'm just like, that will look like child's play compared to this,

because especially now when the market cap is so much higher, and then you have like the Wall Street people on the Cypherpunks, like the community is even bigger and more diverse with people who have wildly different philosophies involved. So yeah, it's going to be, hopefully it won't come to that. But yeah, I'm not really sure. We can't resolve. Yeah, and this is one more reason to prepare, right?

because the worst case scenario is much more likely. This comes and hits everyone in the face by surprise. And I think at the very least, now by framing the issues, thinking through the implications, having the conversation as painful and acrimonious as there are no doubt going to be, is better than just pretending it's not real. Because I just think that's a fantasy. And I think because crypto has come so far,

we've got, I mean, ETFs are issued. People use this. It's real. Now, people actually use this infrastructure every day. I don't think we can afford an industry to be plaza with the threat. So, anyway, that's... Yeah, unfortunately, I think some of the developers are being that way, but we'll have to... I can agree with you.

We'll just follow how that progresses over time. Alex, it has been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much. And congratulations on your raise. And, yeah, we'll have to see what happens. Yeah, thank you so much for having. me Laura, this chat was great. And yeah, we'll just keep an eye on what we're doing and we'll have a lot more coming soon.