Yesterday this tweet appeared on twitter: “Anne Neuberger, Director of NSA’s new Cybersecurity Directorate says that the agency will propose hardware and software standards again. Also notes agency is working to build quantum resistant crypto.” Soon after this, a Cointelegraph article was all over reddit and twitter: “NSA Working to Develop Quantum-Resistant Cryptocurrency: Report” Mixing the content up with some other spicy topics: North Korea and it’s “creative use” of cryptocurrency and the Russian interference with US elections.

One issue: these things have nothing to do with each other. And even worse: the NSA is interested in quantum resistant cryptography, not cryptocurrency. Crypto in the tweet is short for cryptography… Dyor apparently doesn’t apply to journalists. The tunnel vision of one subject focus like “crypto” goes so deep, that the specialized subreddit on cryptography “r/crypto”, has a pinned post “Crypto is not cryptocurrency”, a warning before you make a post in thick red writing “If you don’t know what ‘strong Cryptography’ means, you’re probably submitting to the wrong place. Please read the sidebar! Please note that this is NOT a cryptocurrency subreddit!”, combined with an auto bot that removes any mentions of cryptocurrency or blockchain.

Anyways, if you don’t want to get lost in the swamp of misinformation, never trust news on first sight, and always do your own research using multiple sources, preferably high quality sources.

On topic of quantum resistant cryptography: NIST is the organization you should keep an eye on for developments and standardization of quantum resistant cryptography. One of the first quantum resistant signature schemes to be approved is most likely XMSS.

On topic of quantum resistant cryptocurrency: QRL has successfully launched their quantum resistant cryptocurrency with the implementation of XMSS over a year ago. Their active advisor, Leon Groot Bruinderink is mentioned by NIST in their request for comments for XMSS.