Building a Future-Proof Financial System With Maxwell Denega

In this episode, Francis Gorman speaks with Maxwell Denega, the founder and CEO of Quantum Chain, about the urgent need for quantum-resistant financial systems. Maxwell shares his personal journey that led to the creation of Quantum Chain, emphasizing the importance of addressing quantum threats in the financial sector. The conversation delves into misconceptions surrounding quantum-resistant blockchain technology, the challenges of building secure systems, and the potential risks posed by the convergence of quantum computing and AI. Maxwell stresses the need for vigilance in choosing financial products and understanding the underlying technologies to ensure safety in an evolving digital landscape.

Takeaways

• Maxwell's journey from losing $4.5 million to creating Quantum Chain.
• Quantum computing is no longer a distant threat; it's imminent.
• The importance of building quantum-safe systems from day one.
• Misconceptions about quantum resistance in blockchain are prevalent.
• Regulators are just beginning to understand quantum threats.
• AI and quantum computing together pose significant risks.
• Choosing financial products wisely is crucial in today's landscape.
• The need for proprietary technology in quantum resistance.
• Harvest Now Decrypt Later (HNDL) is already a concern.
• The convergence of AI and quantum computing is a game changer.

Sound Bites

• "I could have taken another six years."
• "Quantum attacks are going to be happening."
• "It's a scary time."

Transcript

Francis Gorman (00:02.92)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Entropy podcast. I'm your host, Francis Gorman. Before we dive in, if today's conversation challenges you, sparks a new idea or sharpens how you think about the world, don't keep it to yourself. Subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with someone who enjoys staying curious. Today, I'm joined by Maxwell Denega, the founder and CEO of Quantum Chain, an architect of the quantum resistant financial system. leads the strategic vision to rebuild global financial infrastructure for post quantum world integration cryptographic

resilience, institutional settlement and AI driven compliance at the protocol level. With a background spanning counter-tour operations, investment backing, asset management and over a decade in blockchain architecture, Maxwell brings a rare combination of sovereign grade security thinking and deep financial market expertise. His work focuses on replacing legacy financial rails with future proofed infrastructure designed for central banks, regulated issuers and systematically important institutions.

Maxwell is responsible for overall strategy, sovereign engagement, regulatory alignment, capital formation and global partnerships. He regularly advises banks, regulators and policymakers on quantum risk, financial resilience and next generation monetary systems. Maxwell, it's lovely to have you here with me today.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (01:18.05)
Great to be here, Francis. Thank you very much for the invitation.

Francis Gorman (01:21.522)
You're very welcome. Maxwell, for people hearing your name for the first time, what problem bothered you enough that you decided to start Quantum Chain?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (01:31.63)
That actually takes me back to the quantum chain origin story. this was about actually, let me give a bit of context there. So I'm ex military very long time ago, past life of mine, anti-terrorism task force for about five years. I then moved into banking, fin crime compliance, then eventually investment banking technology platforms about 10 years. During that time, I discovered cryptocurrency like many of us did around 2012, 2013, did pretty well investing over

sort of six, seven years, got to a pretty happy place. I was in Zurich at the time. I'd been there for a couple of years and I woke up one day and all of the money that I had made in my endeavors, my trading and investing was gone. So that was around four and a half million dollars. So there was a bit of a state of disbelief when this happened. As I said, it's one of those moments you wake up, you check your wallet like every sort of crypto bro sort of does.

and there are just zeros instead of the numbers you expect to see. so the wrong side of the figure. so that was a very startling moment for me and for my, for my family. and I sort of had a choice at that point in time, I could have, taken another six years. We could have foregone holidays again, all the niceties and luxuries of life and canceled, bonuses and put that into investing again and try to rebuild this, this pot one more time.

knowing full well that the markets follow cycles and it might be increasingly more difficult. Or I can build a system that means nobody gets to feel that feeling that I've just felt, that terror and epic change. So that's what we decided to do. We decided to create a new blockchain system in which being hacked was not a possibility.

At that point in time, and this was about three and a half years ago, conveniently when the Russia-Ukraine war kicked off and hacks were quite prevalent, quantum computing really wasn't a thing at the time. It wasn't being talked about widely. It wasn't a narrative that was coming around. In fact, even back then, AI wasn't a huge thing. But the way that I was thinking about it my situation at the time, it seemed important enough to consider in the build. So we did. included

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (03:55.758)
proprietary quantum safe algorithms, figured out what a honey trap system would look like and built it all into the chain natively. And once we did two years on from that point, quantum was no longer sort of 20 years away narrative. Suddenly it was five to 10, you know what I mean? So suddenly people were talking about it. And then six months later, when quantum chain starts our sales and sort of go to market with basic products, it's not five years away anymore. It's happening now and people are scared that

know, 2030 quantum attacks are going to be happening and that there's already harvest now to cripple later attacks happening as we speak. So I think timing wise got it very, very right. Nail on the head. think narrative wise, we got it right as well. And that's what it was. That's the origin story of quantum. And that was the sort of the pivotal moment for me where I decided that's a problem that needs to be solved.

Francis Gorman (04:55.496)
It's the best business case I've heard in a long time. Now, four and a half million, most people would have curled up in bed and bed it down for a long time. But that shows a level of resilience to get up and go again and say, I'm going to fix this problem. Can I ask, did you ever see any of that money back again or was it gone, gone?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (05:09.709)
Hmm.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (05:13.358)
No, no, we didn't see any of that again that was well and truly gone So the the Swiss police at that point in time simply didn't know what to do with it not just the fact that it was an internet fraudulent attack, but That it was blockchain. They even their cyber crime division really didn't know what to do even though I'd

provided all of the transaction IDs from my wallet through to exchanges, et cetera. Once that money hits exchanges, it gets converted and withdrawn. There's really not a lot you can do about it.

Francis Gorman (05:45.967)
terrifying. I'm going to check my wallet straight after this call. Max, no, no, I can imagine. I can imagine. I'm getting the fear even thinking about what that must have been like. Max, there a specific moment where I suppose the quantum threat stopped being theoretical for you and started feeling urgent? I know you said after that moment, you lost the money and decided to do something about it.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (05:48.741)
It was, yeah.

Yeah, not my best day.

Francis Gorman (06:15.528)
quantum wasn't really a topic. kind of, where did that light bulb come on? was actually, we need to do this.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (06:23.564)
Well, that's interesting actually, because me being ex-anti-terrorism amphibious assault task force and then being in finance, I sort of notice a pattern in human behavior, which is where, you know, words do not match the outcome. And that is that as soon as, as soon as they were prevalent companies in the space, the Googles, the IBMs, and even to the point, Ethereum and other mainstream protocols, as soon as they're telling you that a

problem is five years away. It's not it's today. That's it's right now. In fact, it's in the thick of it already. So, you know, these stories started coming out almost a year ago. Now, the bandwagon is well and truly being jumped on by many, many people. And so, yeah, as soon as you hear mainstream companies, especially competitors, saying that there's a problem that's going to be multiple years away, I would say you prepare for absolutely right now because

They want you not to be as prepared as they are and they know that, you know, their transformation is going to take a certain amount of time. So they're going to tell you that it's later than it's expected. So whether that's military days, banking days, startup days, if someone says, okay, this problem is five to 10, it's right now.

Francis Gorman (07:44.202)
It's an interesting lens on it. I get what you're saying with the bandwagon. It's it's everyone seems to be either a quantum expert now or have a quantum startup of some kind. So I totally I totally get that lens. Max, I wanted to ask because I'm intrigued with the whole the whole problem and solution space here. You worked across finance, tech and blockchain. What did traditional finance get wrong about security that crypto also repeated? And now we're in this situation we're in today.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (08:14.614)
crikey everything. Sorry, everything is relatively the same cycle to be honest. There's this promise of a new era and then there's greed that forms over innovation and control and then institutional adoption. And now we're at the point of regulation again. And all while creating intermediaries between all these innovations that are effectively recreating the exact same payment system that we have before and the same

messaging systems as we had before. don't get me wrong, there are really amazing innovators in the space. One particular company I'd call out is Chainlink for what they're doing. They see an actual issue out in the market. They've probably had people that have been doing it for 20, 30 years who understand that simple changes have the largest effect. And so the landscape is absolutely changing.

In the main area where it's changing is the whole messaging and value move versus value move and messaging. Obviously the two types of payments that we've got. So traditional finance, not going to go down a rabbit hole here, but traditional finance, you send a message and then the money moves later if it ever moves at all, because sometimes it just doesn't. Where blockchain, you move the value and then you have to attach the messaging and the compliance afterwards. But a lot of people have jumped on this blockchain.

Again, not a bandwagon, but the system that's relatively easy to build on comparative to what you used to be able to do in traditional finance And you've got a lot of people sort of making a very agentic and marketing a lot. So a lot of the same problems were Just reborn with different tools a lot of a lot of the same and all the same hacks and fraud that has happened again, but it will change it is changing. I mean not just quantum but

Like I said, there are other very interesting companies out there trying to change what they really understand is the underlying problem of TradFi.

Francis Gorman (10:19.101)
Now it's intriguing to me to kind of just listen to people in this space talk about it because everyone has a slightly different perspective. There is one thing that comes up over and over again and it's kind of this idea of Q day and if quantum computing hits faster than expected, what actually breaks first in global finance?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (10:41.624)
Great question. So, okay, so let's, let's add some context to what that is. You probably mentioned it on the podcast previously, but Q day is this idea that quantum computing reaches this critical mass point and then something breaks. Now the impact of that quantum computing has to be commercial enough to be used in the direction that we're worried about it being used. And that is when someone wants to target money, finance, banking, et cetera.

And a lot of people talk about blockchain and wallets being hacked. But really, that's not where we're keeping our money. Most people, you know, dabble in crypto and then pull the money out and they're back to traditional banking. So the problem, the target really is still RSA and ECC encryptions that wrapping your traditional systems. So Q Day is the day that we're worried about this dystopian day where quantum computers start hacking banks. Now, there's an even more terrifying day.

than that. And that's when we have the combination of quantum computing and AI systems, which effectively adds a brain adds an operating system to them, which makes the Q day not just Q day, it makes it Q infinite, you know, that that computer is going to carry on carry on carry on retargeting and reattacking as much as it possibly can with absolutely no remorse or lack of energy. So it is quite a terrifying concept. But back to today, it's already breaking

a little bit. I it might not even be wholly attributed to quantum computing, but we do have what we call Harvest Now Decrypt Later, or HNDL. And that is systems that are powerful enough to get past these RSA type securities and harvest personal data. So these

Systems are being stolen in packets. Let's say like in these packages that they can't yet break into So they're being held in storage that they'll be broken into later in the hopes that you haven't changed passwords You haven't changed address you haven't You know Enforced your system a little more so that's already going on but when the power of computation grows even further It's really a case of how many qubits are being used versus how many digits are protecting the thing that you don't

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (12:56.812)
want them to get hold of your money. So a really funny example of that. And it won't work this way, but just an example so people can understand. Your bank card has 16 digits on the front of it, and then another four for the date that it needs, and then three on the back. that's only, that's not many digits for a quantum computer to try and change into the digits that it can use. So if it wants to make a payment,

On your behalf all it needs is your name and those digits. So we're already kind of there. You know, I believe IBM recently, demonstrated a 131 logical qubit computer, I think. So that could do it. Whether that becomes commercial or not is a different story, but when it does, that's when you mix people and people's intentions, with computation that can do these things. So, you know, it's, it's coming.

Hopefully we'll be prepared by the time that happens.

Francis Gorman (13:57.018)
Just, just, I don't know. That is the hope, I suppose. once we figure it out. And I think the hope is wanting. want to pull on a bit now. Do you think the industry is underreacting to the quantum risk? Or is it just overwhelmed by too many future threats?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (14:18.798)
I think it's a bit of a mix. I think there is a bit of underreacting going on and that's typically because large industry players usually innovate when there are money flows and unfortunately, AI has been the bubble right now that everybody's been chasing and it will be for some time still. But the money flows around quantum computing and resistance, et cetera, are now starting to appear. So I think innovation will definitely start to pick up.

but also transformational change within banks can take a long, long time. I mean, it's not just the decision from on high, then you've got budget decisions, governance, you've got executive committees have to be convened, projects around it, then you have to hire people. It's a very, very long, long process. Not to mention the sort of market skill gap that we have at the moment. So even that hiring is going to take a long time finding very specific people. And that's if you get it right in the first place.

So I think that's going to be a bit of a struggle, possibly one that means there will be some institutions that end up falling prey to this Q day that we describe. Maybe not in the exact way we describe it, but definitely at some point, because they simply took too long or perhaps even chose a solution that wasn't fit for purpose. But it's a mixture. Yeah. But there is an underreaction for sure.

Francis Gorman (15:46.955)
And I think that shows a solution that wasn't fit for purpose is a real possibility at the moment. Looking at Vendor land, there's lots of lots of people selling what I would call man in the middle attacks that are claiming to be quantum resistant. So, yeah, let's let's see how that works out. One thing, Max, I want to talk about is what's the biggest misconception people have when they hear quantum resistant blockchain?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (16:06.636)
Mm.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (16:18.222)
Oof, okay. Uh, the biggest misconception and that is the, everybody has the right intention because that is not true. Uh, not at all. Uh, we've already said there's a bandwagon around this, you know, it's a trend. It's a theme. I mean, it's a mega trend even after AI that's coming that is quantum. So I see a lot of companies who were formed very, very recently, uh, claiming to be able to sell

quantum safe solutions and migrations and governance. And, you know, they want to put someone on your C suite that can advise on this, even call it a chief quantum officer I've seen. So there's, there's a business around this that a lot of people are following before wanting to actually make a huge difference, make a proper difference, or sometimes even delusionally they think they are.

But there are two sides to this coin. One is the blockchain side, which is obviously a vehicle. And then you've got the non blockchain side, which obviously still needs quantum resistance. mean, we're talking about communications, we're talking about networks, your internet. If there is a quantum attack on HTTPS certification, then your internet is going down. And there's so much that can be done about it. there is a lot that needs to be done here. A lot of consultants that do need to take this

this knowledge to the market to convince, you know, not just banks, but telco, pharma, everybody that we have to make this migration. But one thing that really bugs me is that that cannot be done with open source software or standardized software, not something that's publicly available. And the simple fact is blockchains cannot be retrofitted. So you can't take an encryption that everybody has access to, including a hacker.

Or an AI system and then retrofit that into a public chain that's been around for 10 12 years It's already harshly coded And then call it quantum safe. It doesn't work like that, you know, okay, it might be quantum safe enough for that day and then that day onwards for a little while, but it wasn't yesterday and Blockchains being immutable means that that data stays forever. It doesn't change, know previous blocks are vulnerable

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (18:43.946)
So unless you create a blockchain from day one, natively quantum safe, it never really will be. And then if you use open source software to do it, again, that hacker likely using AI at this point, whether it's 12 months away, whatever it is, will take that exact same encryption that you have to advertise on your website or that you have claimed to use, and they will reverse engineer it and go to town. So the

The misconception is that the people, the mainstream protocols, the mainstream users now are going to help. I don't think they will. They'll claim it. Absolutely. They'll claim it because they want to stay alive, but there'll be very interesting developments over the next year. There'll be forks on forks on fake upgrades, blah, blah, blah.

Francis Gorman (19:39.572)
It's definitely interesting. I think I'm going to watch this space very closely because, as you said, previous blocks are immutable and therefore if there is a vulnerability baked in, it remains, which is is fascinating. had it in Barnes on the podcast a couple of months back and he was talking about Bitcoin when it started off and still having to expose its public its public key when it's doing a transaction and therefore open a small window of vulnerability at different points. So there's I think when you start to break this down at a technical level, there is definitely

certain things we should be worried about when it comes to blockchain technologies, which is definitely kind of fascinating when you pull it apart. With that in mind, what does quantum change do differently to make sure that you have that quantum resistant blockchain from day one?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (20:29.858)
Well, that's really the key. And I've just mentioned how standards is a bit of a swear word when it comes to quantum computing, because ultimately it's somewhat like war. And I do believe that's helped me, that's helped us, that having that sort of conflict mentality of what are the weapons, what are the tools, what's the strategies and processes involved in this, because it's going to be an ever evolving sort of landscape of how safe are we versus how powerful are they, and it's going to carry on that way.

Again, we made sure we were quantum safe from day one. Every layer of what quantum chain is, is wrapped. There is a backup system, you know, just in case something goes wrong in the future. I highly doubt it will. It's built that it doesn't work that way, but it's there regardless. And we also embedded things like compliance, AI driven compliance at the protocol level, which means that

Worst case scenario, I mean, in this imaginary world where quantum chain gets hacked, again, it won't, but let's say it does. The user still has to prove themselves human, not only human, but a customer of the client using the chain. So it creates complexity in ways that even an AI system would find extremely difficult to do anything with. And that's, again, that's behind all of the defenses that we have.

So we've kept everything proprietary, meaning we have used zero open source code. Nobody has access to it. Nobody will. That's really key. Again, when it comes to quantum, you can't share source because as soon as you do, as soon as that door is unlocked, it can be accessed. And then again, reverse engineered. So we've made sure that we've kept everything very, very tight, very, very secure, secure, insecure,

That's what's going to win eventually.

Francis Gorman (22:30.283)
I haven't heard anyone talk about that kind of compliance to prove human in a blockchain. You know, so that's definitely a different angle. It's not the it's not the how many cars are in this picture sort of a sort of a prompt. It's a bit more taught through the maximum. I'm thinking about what's going on at the moment. And maybe by the time this podcast there is the market will have changed again. But let's just let's just take a bit of

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (22:47.694)
Ha ha ha.

Francis Gorman (22:59.851)
point in time and look at what's happening with Bitcoin at the moment on the market. It looks like Bitcoin potentially will dip below the cost of mining over the next couple of weeks or may just hang above it. And that's obviously causing a bit of a shake in the market. What does that mean for the future of digital currency in your opinion?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (23:04.014)
Hmm.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (23:15.864)
Yes.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (23:21.024)
that's a very multi multifaceted question because you could talk about how that's going to impact some funds like micro strategy. And if that causes potential liquidation issues, if that's going to impact things like tether because most of their pegging comes from Bitcoin, so they could end up getting de pegged. But to be honest, in the the light of this conversation, I don't just worry for the state of crypto.

very worried. I'm worried deeply for all assets, crypto and otherwise, people's pensions, that believe it or not, keeps me up at night sometimes because, it's something I want to, at Quantum Chain want to recreate when we get to the product layer. Any asset that is due to survive, let's just say five years when we believe this Q day will happen up until that point, how can that product not be quantum safe?

you know, life insurance, mortgages, anything like that that's supposed to last. So I worry about that a lot more than I worry about the state of Bitcoin. Now, I respect what Bitcoin was when it came around. I respect the idea, the concept of what it was going to achieve. I love what it's done for the industry, for sure. I've never owned a Bitcoin. It's never been something I particularly trusted or wanted to make money from.

But it doesn't, it's not my priority at the moment. For me, my priority is getting to the central banks, getting donations, getting the regulators, regional banks, institutions, and helping them understand that tokenizing assets, A is the way forward. Of course it is. And, you know, getting payments on chain, but doing it on a protocol that's going to let them and let people's money, people's investments, the houses, et cetera, survive.

That's what I'm worried about.

Francis Gorman (25:25.964)
Thanks for that, Max. And it is when you bring it back to the human level, it always is more profound. I'm sure you've been speaking to regulators in this space. How did they react when you bring up quantum threats, curiosities, skepticism or concern? What's the reaction that's coming out of those conversations?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (25:47.119)
Okay, there's two sides to that really. One is that they're slowly becoming aware of what quantum is. But the problem there is they're only just aware now of what blockchain is. So they've just sort of come over the hump on that one. And now, know, we're throwing stable coins at them. And then that changes payments, that changes a lot of policy that changes cross border everything.

And then we're throwing quantum on top. So there's a lot of education that has to go on And I hate to say this. I'm kind of glad in a strange way that quantum is a buzzword if that makes sense because Obviously with what we create we're taking a lot of assets that exist and then we're slapping the word quantum on it because obviously for it to be quantum safe or do what it does, you know, we get to do that and Luckily that that piques interest

So that helps us with the education piece because a lot of people do go, okay, that sounds like something we should be listening to. We should read about, we should figure out, and then maybe it's part of what comes next. The other side of it is how easy is it to be adopted? Again, these people have just figured out how to adopt blockchain. It's gonna be a multi, multi-year journey between still using traditional systems.

understanding the blockchain piece, moving wallet share over and eventually the volume of these payments overtakes traditional, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that's going to take time. But then to say, okay, we've had mainstream protocols pushed upon us by certain corners of the globe. I'm not going to say it out loud. And we've been told to use them. So that's what we're doing. So for someone else to come along, even if it's a solution that we desperately need,

they're a little bit hesitant to re adopt to go forward to another protocol again. Unfortunately, there's no other way to do it. You know, we can't, we can't just wrap someone else's chain. We have to go, sorry guys, look, it's only safe if you do this on one quantum, you know? So that that's difficult. Despite a lot of regulators understanding what we're trying to do, what they understand the mission, they buy all accounts, it because they know it has to happen eventually.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (28:07.15)
And luckily, lot of the regulators are being told that quantum is going to become part of policy, part of cyber resilience policy changes soon and part of grants and funds and things that need backing by states. And the WEF, we were there recently in January in Davos. The narrative very much covered

not just blockchain stablecoins, but it very much covered quantum as well. you know, the people at the very top, even the ones that we don't get to talk to, they are talking about this. So there is a bit of a sandwich effect with regulators in the middle. it is being considered well, but

It's going to be slow. It's going to be very slow. We can innovate as fast as we can, but the adoption rate takes a little time.

Francis Gorman (29:01.812)
I'm listening to you and I'm thinking what's been harder, building the technology or convincing people the problem is real.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (29:09.23)
Okay, my, my CTO is going to hate me for saying this, honestly, because obviously he built the system itself. But for me, it's convincing people 100%. The building sure might have taken two years and then we build things on top that takes you know, however long in modulated steps, but the convincing has already taken that time and then some, you know, because we started talking about this.

two years ago, two and a half years ago, but even back when it was, you know, people thought it was laughable. Like it was never going to be, know, something considered for the future. Like I was talking about the Terminator 2 style scenario. So yeah, convincing people for me has definitely been harder.

Francis Gorman (29:55.98)
I think think the two of us are on the same page at this one. Convincing people is the is the hardest part to take action or to buy into the idea. I'm going to pivot slightly, Max, because there's one thing you posted on LinkedIn and I've come across this a bit on the podcast with different guests. And you talked about recruiting and false job adverts being put up. So basically impersonation scams.

How bad is that problem in the space right now, especially for companies like yourself who are looking for a very specific talent set, but it's also a very sexy space for people to want to get into.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (30:31.915)
Yeah.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (30:37.088)
Yeah, that's been interesting lately. mean, as much as that's somewhat of a compliment in a strange way, there have been people out there using our name and using our brand to commit recruitment scams. Now, it partly baffles me why. I I can only imagine because we're in this space, this blockchain space, et cetera, that people assume uptick is high, that assets are being bought and that wallets can be

You know, you can convince people to share wallet keys, et cetera. I mean, obviously don't do that. You know, don't share any personal details and share any private keys. if anyone does come across a quantum chain label job and you want to ask me about it, you can LinkedIn me directly. I'm always happy to talk about that. but yeah, I think like you say, it's a sexy space and as always scammers look for opportunity and, and I guess they, they think there is some them.

Yeah, I do hope of course that nobody falls prey to this. We are staying on top of it as much as possible. Obviously we have not given anyone leave to use our brand name or even our staff names. So yeah, be careful.

Francis Gorman (31:54.262)
I think that's a very strong message, especially in the current job market. know, we're seeing a lot of people getting desperate looking for roles and it's very easy to be susceptible when you're vulnerable. So I think that's good advice to think twice. I think that's definitely an area to watch for if you're out there on the job and don't fall victim to a scam. Max, you often talk about AI and quantum conversion. Where do you think that...

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (32:07.277)
Yeah.

Francis Gorman (32:22.125)
Collision changes finance the most.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (32:26.954)
Yeah, well, I mentioned this earlier. If quantum computing is the body, then AI will be the brain. they're both advancing at such speeds that eventually the convergence is unavoidable. We get to a point where quantum computing is not just powerful enough. Logical qubits are high enough. Air rates are down low enough that we can hack banks. I mean, that's fine.

in a way, at least that has pace, you know, it's relatively slow. There's a human of sorts behind it that have to direct, you know, that process that has to find the thing it wants to hack in the first place and then attempt it, albeit with some higher power. Right now you add AI to the mix, even an LLM like we have now, but you know, let's say an unblocked one, unrestricted one, jailbroken.

Then you're basically giving that computer an operating system that can go and search for targets. It can then attack those targets in the exact way it knows how to, using any system that's open source that you've used to protect your system. Thus knowing exactly what your system looks like and how it's protected and then just getting through it. So, you you're basically giving the machine a skeleton key. And then it has

relentless drive, infinite energy, as long as power stays on and absolutely no remorse. So that convergence of quantum and AI, that's infinitely more terrifying than one or the other. If a system now, an AI system can create a passport for someone and looks perfectly real, you slap.

quantum computing behind it with all that extra power and it's churning out a million of them a second and that can cause Scaled issues. We can't even comprehend yet. Now what happens when everybody's identity is suddenly cloned and changed and redistributed? That's something we haven't even a lot of people haven't even thought of everyone wants to protect their money. Sure, they protect your Bitcoin. Okay, fine But your identity is going to be a problem

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (34:50.53)
you know, your basic information. And at that point, anything's possible. really, we're at mercy of people's intentions. And there are some pretty bad people out there. I should know. So that's scary. I really hope we can get to a point where we have systems in place that don't allow that to happen. But again, it's going to be a constant battle. It's going to be once that turns on, it doesn't stop. It can't stop.

And it's not just going to be one computer. There'll be thousands eventually. So as soon as there's a crack in any system, that system's gone. And then it'll move on to another one. It won't stop.

Francis Gorman (35:29.645)
Yeah.

Francis Gorman (35:33.007)
I do sometimes when I go to bed at night after these conversations have trouble having good dreams because my head is full of all of the potentials of what could go wrong in the world as we look into the future. I suppose the more I get exposed to different perspectives, there is always that that stargazing aspect of this may end quite badly. And I think that's something we need to we need to watch in this space as

taught leaders and people with kind of control over helping to shape the future that we we call out the threats just as much as we call out the solutions. Max, if listeners remember one thing from this conversation, what should that be?

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (36:19.374)
I mean, I don't want to end this conversation with fear. I mean, what we've just covered is pretty scary, but we are at an inflection point now that we've as humanity we've never seen before. And that is quantum AI blockchain. And at least in my world where we're focusing that is in finance, but it is a scary time. choose your banks, choose your investments, choose your crypto products very wisely.

If you can look at the underlying tech providers, make sure they are safe, truly safe, not just claiming to be, because this will become very, very important soon. And, you know, do that for your vulnerable family members as well. Tell everyone.

Francis Gorman (37:04.664)
Great advice. Max, look, was a real pleasure having you on. I think the episode is full of nuggets to listen back on and pieces to do further research upon and all of that good stuff. So I really did enjoy the conversation and having you on. So thanks for taking the time out to speak with me today.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (37:11.725)
Yeah

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (37:23.628)
No, so did I, Francis. Thank you again for the invitation. It's been great being here. If you want to see me on here again, just let me know.

Francis Gorman (37:30.85)
Sounds good. We'll get the reactions from the listeners and we might have a round two in the next couple of months.

Maxwell Denega | Quantum Chain (37:38.424)
Good, good, All right.

Francis Gorman (37:40.814)
Thank you.