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This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMoney has been reduced to a simulacrum of its former self, a mere obligation by a counterparty to perform bookkeeping functions.\u201d In Star Trek<\/em>, it took only seconds to travel from the Starship Enterprise down to a nearby planet.<\/p>\n Crewmembers only had to step into the Transporter, which dematerialized them into a pattern of energy (accurate to the quantum level) and beamed them to a target location where the energy would be converted back into matter so the person could be reassembled.<\/p>\n But is the person who beams back up the same that beamed down?<\/p>\n The official, in-universe answer is that they\u2019re one and the same. The consciousness of transported crewmembers remains continuous, they say, thanks to the perfection of the Transporter\u2019s quantum-level scan and reconstruction.\u00a0<\/p>\n As proof, they cite crewmembers claiming a memory of being in transit.<\/p>\n But we\u2019ve since learned how quantum-level transportation works, and that\u2019s not it.<\/p>\n In quantum teleportation, first discovered in 1993<\/a>, the only thing being teleported is information.<\/p>\n Teleporting, say, a qubit, requires that the original quantum state of that qubit be destroyed: By the laws of physics, collecting precise information on a quantum state collapses its superposition, thereby destroying it.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the collected information can then be sent as classical data (ones and zeros) over a satellite or fiber optic cable and then, thanks to the physics-magic of entanglement, reassembled (from other particles) at its destination.<\/p>\n So the unsettling truth is that the Transporter on the Starship Enterprise can only have worked by killing its passengers \u2014 the crewmember who beamed down is not the one who beamed back up.<\/p>\n This has some sci-fi implications for the future of money.<\/p>\n In banking, the way money is \u201csent\u201d from Bank A to Bank B is that Bank A subtracts a number in its spreadsheet and sends a message to Bank B instructing it to add the same number to theirs.<\/p>\n Only the message is sent, not the money \u2014 which is why we need banks: to send each other messages about our money.<\/p>\n With quantum money<\/em>, however, the money sends its own messages.<\/p>\n Quantum money is the idea that value could be represented by the quantum state of a particle and exchanged via quantum teleportation.<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Stefano Gogioso, A Quantum Moneyfesto<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n