That same stage, during the same conference, gave a platform to Jeff Booth, a Bitcoin venture capitalist with no background in physics, who presented a claim that quantum computers may never pose a threat to Bitcoin. The argument, drawn from a 222-page unreferenced paper he co-authored with two associates who also have no physics credentials, holds that Bitcoin’s 10-minute block interval constitutes empirical proof that time itself is discrete rather than continuous (yes, really!), that this falsifies the foundations of quantum mechanics, and that quantum computing is therefore built on a philosophical error.
I read the paper. All 222 pages. Well, skimmed – I love my grey cells too much. The core argument is a repeated with increasing confidence across twelve chapters: because Bitcoin’s blocks arrive at discrete intervals, time itself must be discrete; because quantum mechanics assumes continuous time, quantum mechanics must be wrong; therefore quantum computers cannot threaten Bitcoin. I wanted to add some analogy here to illustrate how nonsensical this argument is, but I couldn’t think of anything else as stupid. The paper confuses a protocol design parameter (a difficulty-adjusted target block time) with a discovery about fundamental physics. It contains no bibliography, no peer review, no engagement with the actual quantum computing literature on error correction or fault tolerance, and its mathematical content consists largely of redefining existing physical constants in Bitcoin terminology while relying on the very continuous-time formalisms it claims to have falsified.
It is, to be direct, pseudoscience – a really, really, bad pseudoscience: apparently a year’s worth of their work went into producing this sophisticated-sounding argument that a payment network’s engineering choices reveal the nature of reality. It’s an absolute nonsense with the core thesis that mixes Apples and Nuclear Submarines. And it was presented, with absolute confidence and smugness (“...physics doesn’t understand what measurement is…“), to an audience of tens of thousands from the most prestigious stage at the world’s largest Bitcoin conference.
Ok, it makes more sense now...
From here