He discusses the basics of knot theory, and then discusses how knot theory can be combined with quantum computing to make a non-copyable, non-counterfeitable money. Apparently it's based on a real 2010 paper by Peter Shor
IMO, not as good as ActionLab's usual videos. Glossed over a lot of stuff and didn't even discuss bitcoin!
Scott Aaronson mentioned that this was one of the things he was interested in before Bitcoin came out.
He said he wrote several papers about it. From my understanding, quantum money doesn't solve the need for a mint.
Here's at least one paper from 2012:
https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/moneyfull.pdf
I wonder if they still think we need quantum money, or whether bitcoin achieved what they were going for, just that we need to make bitcoin's cryptography quantum-secure
Clickbait!!
Sorry!! The title of the vid was too good for bitcoiners not to post on SN!!
Sounds interesting but don’t we already have money with those properties?
That was my first thought too. Really disappointed that he didn't even mention Bitcoin.
It’s not surprising to me. This is just about a neat application of some super nerdy theory.
I would be interested in seeing a comparison of the possible properties of QuantumKnotsCoins to the current properties of bitcoin though.
the intersection of specialized knowledge that would be required to make such a comparison would be crazy for anyone to meet. But I imagine that people working on quantum security in the bitcoin space are best positioned to do so
My totally naive guess is that this hypothetical money would have other severe limitations.