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Random means without order. Strange that disorder serves as the foundation for the most comprehensive order of nature: modern physics.
Physics today asserts that, concerning the microcosmos, what happens next is totally unpredictable per individual event. Only the behavior of a group of events is subject to prediction. Matter behaves like a flipped coin. We are totally clueless what it will show on the next flip, but pretty certain that, over many flips, close to half will be heads and close to half will be tails.
This built-in ignorance is the key to achieving a level playing field in cybersecurity. It implies that the dumbest guesser of a dice toss will be as accurate over time as the smartest, best equipped, and most powerful agent. Today, cyber empires dominate with security not shared by the rest of us. They wish to keep this advantage, but technology can’t be stopped. Justice is here—and spreading.
Randomness is often counter intuitive. If you flip a perfect coin 100 times and it comes up heads each time, then most will argue that the odds are for heads on the 101st flip. A few will consult their intuition and say, since the coin is balanced, then it is time for tails. Mathematically, the outcome of the next flip is totally divorced from the history of the flips, so the odds are still 50/50. Another counter-intuitive conclusion: Every oddity of outcome is associated with a number of flips that will make this odd combination as highly likely as one desires. Go figure!
Quantum computers observe the microcosmic outcomes of given initial conditions. While each outcome is in doubt, the group behavior of repeat trials is very indicative. By contrast, standard computers, so called Turing machines, are deterministic. They crank out the right answer every time they are used.
If you prepare a microcosmic coin in method A, and read the result of the flip with an A-type reader, then you will read it the way it was prepared. If you read it with method B, then the reading is random. This simple fact is the basis of secure key exchange.
The sender prepares some n bits (coins) in method A and n bits in method B, randomly chosen. The recipient of the bits randomly selects method A or method B to check each bit. Then the transmitter and the recipient communicate to find out with which bits both used the same method. For those bits, the readings of both the recipient and the transmitter are the same, and these bits then become a new securely shared key. Any eavesdropper handling these bits will destroy the delicate flipping status, and will be discovered.
A greater shock to randomness thinking was delivered by John Stewart Bell, who showed that coordinated randomness is observed between two events that are so far from each other that even light (information) cannot deliver a coordinated response. In some mysterious way, randomness—disorder, unpredictability—behaves the same over two remotely positioned situations. This phenomenon, known as entanglement, promises to deliver perfect secrecy to any communicating partners.
Minority offerings of digital money (e.g. BitMint) are based on the power of randomness. They rely on the bold premise that microcosmic events behave like a perfect coin, or perfect dice, exhibiting pattern-free sequences. Compare this to Bitcoin and Elliptic Curves, which rely on assumed (unproven) mathematical difficulty. All cryptocurrencies so based will evaporate the day some unsuspected math prodigy simplifies that difficulty. By contrast, to hack randomness-based money, you must replace the current tenets of physics. Good luck!
—Gideon Samid, gideon@bitmint.com
