Love that you asked this question. One of the reasons I got excited about quantum is that it might actually be the basis for new and better cryptography!
A couple examples:
Quantum Key Distribution: it turns out you can use the phenomenon of entanglement to create a key distribution mechanism through a non-classical (and thereby, unhackable) channel, in principle. The authors of the original idea won the Turing Award last year: https://www.acm.org/media-center/2026/march/turing-award-2025
Certified Randomness: anyone who works in cryptography knows that random number generation is critical. For example, an older Android Bitcoin wallet had a biased RNG that resulted in people losing funds! You can use quantum mechanics to more reliably (and provably) generate random numbers. Scott A was actually a co-author on this work which was quite cool: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08737-1
Those are just two examples that we currently know of. There's more far-out ideas like quantum money, one-time programs, qIO, etc. But I actually think Bitcoin in 2100 might incorporate one or more aspects of quantum-enabled cryptography! Which would be cool if it made the protocol more robust and made the ppl using it more secure.
Love that you asked this question. One of the reasons I got excited about quantum is that it might actually be the basis for new and better cryptography!
A couple examples:
Certified Randomness: anyone who works in cryptography knows that random number generation is critical. For example, an older Android Bitcoin wallet had a biased RNG that resulted in people losing funds! You can use quantum mechanics to more reliably (and provably) generate random numbers. Scott A was actually a co-author on this work which was quite cool: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08737-1
Those are just two examples that we currently know of. There's more far-out ideas like quantum money, one-time programs, qIO, etc. But I actually think Bitcoin in 2100 might incorporate one or more aspects of quantum-enabled cryptography! Which would be cool if it made the protocol more robust and made the ppl using it more secure.