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The uncomfortable secret of digital security isn’t that quantum computers are coming, it’s that nobody can prove today’s locks will work when they do.
Yoon Auh, founder and CEO of BOLTS Technologies, holder of 37 patents in applied cryptography, told TheStreet Roundtable how his business is addressing this gap.
BOLTS builds “crypto-agile, cipher neutral security infrastructure. Its QFlex product gives asset owners the ability to swap cryptographic protections without a network-wide update. They just launched a pilot on the Canton Network aimed at tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
"Technically we do what's called cryptographic logistics. We move cryptography around to where it's needed, when it's needed,” he said.
Cryptography is the math that secures everything from bank logins to crypto wallets.
Why everyone is ‘freaking out’
"Quantum computing is very mysterious, but apparently a lot of people are scared of it because of its awesome potential," Auh said. "The only solid potential that they know of is that it could figure out very difficult math problems. Unfortunately, the two math problems that quantum computing has been proven to be good at are the two math problems that modern cryptography is based on."
What he’s describing is called Shor’s algorithm, based on MIT mathematician Peter Shor’s 1994 proof that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could crack the factoring and discrete logarithm problems that power modern cryptography.
In plain english, this just means that essentially all encryption algorithms can be cracked by quantum computers, posing a major threat to all encrypted platforms, including blockchains, your bank, the government, and so much more.
"That's why people are freaking out," he said. "That's why nation-states are going on a barrage of investment and executive orders. China's put in billions and billions, and we're putting in billions."
Washington passed the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act in December 2022, directing all federal agencies to migrate to post-quantum cryptography.
Nothing is provably secure
Auh refused to promise that any solution, including his own, will be 100% safe.
"All modern cryptography, including the legacy ones, RSA, ECC and AES, and all the quantum-resilient cryptography that's been standardized back in 2024 — they're not provably secure," he said. "You cannot get a mathematician or cryptographer to tell you a proof that it is absolutely secure. None. What does that mean? Everything we have is a good guess."
Modern encryption rests on the assumption that certain math problems are difficult to solve, not on proof that they are. The post-quantum algorithm National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standardized in 2024 inherited the same conditional status.
In 2022, a post-quantum contender called SIKE failed publicly after researchers broke the encryption in roughly an hour using a normal computer. The industry’s guesses are educated, but they are guesses.
His answer is to stop betting on any single cipher.
"You don't want to put yourself into a position where you have to do this transition over and over again. It's very painful to do these transitions," he said. "We come in with a novel technology that allows you to change these protective ciphers on the fly, when you need to change it. You transition to our technology called QFlex once, and then you're taken care of."
The industry term is crypto-agility. You can switch locks without replacing the entire door.
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How long before quantum computers break everything?
Quantum experts and researchers have given lots of different answers on when “cryptographically relevant quantum computers” will actually make it to production.
Auh thinks it's the wrong question to ask.
"Any guess that I take is probably gonna be wrong. But what I tend to think about is — does it really matter? We have the science, Peter Shor's algorithm, that says if you have a powerful enough quantum computer, it's going to break. And we have laws in effect that say we've got to now move to quantum-resilient cryptography. Do you need any more incentive? Do you need to know the exact date when it's going to break? That would be a nice date, but that's just a guess," he said.
What strikes him as genuinely strange is the enthusiasm with which people are pursuing quantum.
"Everybody's working towards making this happen faster, which is kind of a weird thing," he said.
That’s because the race isn’t really about your crypto wallet, but is a national security matter.
“The reason why these things are being advanced are national security concerns,” Auh explained.
It’s helpful to think about the quantum threat as an arms race, and the collateral is every digital lock that exists today. The rational posture, according to Auh, isn’t trying to pick the perfect upgrade, it’s flexibility.