Quantum in 2026 looks exactly like crypto in 2013, says Karnika E. Yashwant after Chairing Track at Quantum.Tech World

BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES, August 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- At Quantum.Tech World 2026 in Boston, where Peter Shor delivered the opening keynote and 2025 Nobel Physics laureate John Martinis headlined, entrepreneur and investor Karnika E. Yashwant kept asking the people building the industry the same thing: when can you actually do something with this?

"Nobody could answer that, and these are the people building it," said Karnika E. Yashwant, who served as a track chair at the event. "Quantum doesn't work until it works. When it works, it works. So everybody is waiting for it to work, and in the meantime they're creating different architectures, different strategies, intermediate solutions. Algorithm simulations on GPUs, errors included, just to make some things function today."

The event drew over 1,000 senior decision-makers, heads of national labs, and representation from US Department of Energy National Laboratories. Karnika E. Yashwant, better known in the industry as Mr KEY, engaged with a room that included Shor, whose algorithm made quantum's threat to modern cryptography impossible to ignore, and Martinis, one of the foundational figures in superconducting quantum systems. Directors and senior leaders from Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, NIST, DARPA and the Department of Energy were present, along with quantum leads from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, HSBC, Citi, JP Morgan, Mastercard, Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Roche, Moderna and AT&T.

What struck him was who the sellers were selling to.

"Most of the products there are additional hardware for people who already run quantum computers. Make something smaller, make it more efficient, execute in a different way. That's what's selling. I even found course sellers, people selling training for engineers entering the sector. You're selling shovels to the people digging. AI tooling has the same shape right now. Quantum is one layer earlier. It's far from consumer usage, far from even enterprise usage. There's some direction, some guidance. There's no commonly accepted clarity."

Karnika E. Yashwant entered the blockchain industry in 2013 and says the resemblance is what made the trip worth it.

"This is where I found Bitcoin in 2013. You know the philosophy is great, you know it's going to change everything. You just don't know how, and you don't know what the next step is. Too early, too rudimentary. That's quantum now. I think this industry will be a lot more solid in five years."

Karnika E. Yashwant has spent 18+ years building across technology, media and emerging markets. He is the founder of KEY Difference, incubated Cryptopolitan into a leading crypto, AI and tech media platform, and invests across Web3, AI, space tech and longevity.

Kim Harris
KEY Difference Wire
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