QBT Quantum Blockchain Technologies Plc

 
TIDMQBT 
 
11 March 2022 
 
                      Quantum Blockchain Technologies Plc 
                           ("QBT" or "the Company") 
 
                Bitcoin Mining Research and Development Update 
 
The board of Quantum Blockchain Technologies (AIM: QBT) is pleased to update 
shareholders on the current progress of its Bitcoin mining R&D activities. 
 
The Company's multi-technology approach to develop the fastest Bitcoin ("BTC") 
miner in the market, is moving rapidly ahead. The board and its R&D Team are 
extremely pleased with the results achieved to date and the Company intends to 
put them into practical use as soon as possible. In the meantime, QBT is 
securing its Intellectual Property ("IP") assets, by filing a number of new 
patent applications for each new research result obtained. 
 
Quantum Mining 
 
The Quantum Computing R&D Team has now developed a quantum version of a BTC 
mining algorithm, based on Quantum Bit ("qubit") based quantum computation, 
using quantum logic gates. Testing of the quantum programme will begin shortly 
on a quantum computer, following the signing last week of an NDA with a major 
US technology manufacturer. 
 
The new qubit based algorithm is significant enough to encourage the Company to 
file a patent application to protect this BTC mining development, which will be 
lodged shortly. 
 
Following six months of testing on the D-Wave quantum computer, which is based 
on adiabatic quantum annealing computation ("quantum annealing") (i.e., not 
using qubits / quantum logic gates), the Company completed the analysis phase 
in December 2021, acquiring all of the necessary information. Testing has been 
suspended on this type of quantum computer. Most of the work conducted for 
programming the adiabatic quantum annealing based computer, has been, however, 
very relevant for the Quantum Computing R&D Team, and has resulted in an 
innovative reformulation of SHA-256 (the core BTC mining algorithm) as an 
optimisation problem. 
 
This new reformulation to be solved with a quantum annealing approach, has now 
been developed and tested on a cloud accessed quantum annealing software 
simulator, made available to the Company's Quantum Computing R&D Team by a 
major Japanese producer. A version of the quantum annealing simulator has been 
implemented, using available specifications which will be run initially from an 
IT R&D platform in a datacentre in Milan, Italy. This will allow the Company to 
develop quantum annealing optimisation simulator code on a number of dedicated 
FPGA chips. 
 
The combined use of the quantum optimisation algorithm and the ASIC miner, 
which is currently under development by the Company, is expected to increase 
the hashing speed, compared to the best ASIC miners announced by competitors. 
Tests are ongoing to confirm these initial experimental indications. 
 
A patent application relating to the optimisation conversion of the BTC mining 
algorithm and its integration with an ASIC based miner, will be filed as soon 
as practical. 
 
Artificial Intelligence based Bitcoin Mining 
 
The Company is pleased to announce that it has appointed an international 
expert in the field of Machine Learning to its AI Research Team. The expert is 
the former head of the Neural Networks Research Laboratory of the Department of 
Computer Science of the University of Milan. 
 
The use of AI techniques (mainly Machine Learning) to speed up the successful 
mining of BTC, has been studied by the R&D Team. As part of the testing 
process, these techniques have been partially applied across different levels 
of the entire BTC mining process. As soon as quantitative results are available 
the Company will build prototype "solo" BTC miners (i.e., not in pool mining), 
using existing or separate Computer Processing Units ("CPU"), Graphics 
Processing Units ("GPU") and FPGA cores. 
 
A patent application on the specific AI techniques developed, will be filed as 
soon as practical. 
 
ASIC Development and Second Patent 
 
Drafting of the technical document for the Company's second patent application 
is now complete and implementation on an FPGA is nearly finished. Results of 
the overall performance achieved by the combination of the optimisations from 
the first and the second patent will be obtained for the final FPGA code 
shortly. The Company plans to conduct tests using the new optimisations within 
an ASIC development environment, to provide more accurate measurements with 
respect to energy consumption and mining speed, on a 5nm ASIC, which is the 
Company's ultimate goal. 
 
The Company is working with two independent partners to conduct verification 
tests on the final performance of QBT's prototype ASIC. Their role is also to 
advise on how best to achieve efficiencies in coding, in order to best exploit 
the specific manufacturing technologies of individual silicon fabricators, when 
it comes to manufacturing of the prototype chips. 
 
Quantitative performance data will be available within a few weeks. 
 
IT infrastructure 
 
The Company's IT infrastructure is now fully operational. Solo mining 
activities, created to test AI accelerated miners, running on CPU, GPU and FPGA 
are currently being finalised. The Company will provide the results of these 
tests once testing has been completed. 
 
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive Chairman of QBT, commented: "We have made 
impressive progress on all our core R&D areas, and we will now start field 
testing our optimisations of BTC mining in the next few weeks. 
 
"We are also conducting internal and independent performance measures to help 
us assess mining speed and energy consumption within the ASIC line of research, 
which is now at the simulation stage. Based on data we have recorded to date, 
we expect to see a higher performance than originally estimated; this is mainly 
due to the optimisations which will be included in the second patent 
application, based on the work of our cryptography expert and the coding 
techniques implemented by our FPGA/ASIC Design Team. 
 
"All of the results will be verified before any cooling techniques are 
implemented which, if applied, could allow for a further increase in speed." 
 
This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of 
the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 as it forms part of UK domestic law 
by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR"), and is disclosed 
in accordance with the Company's obligations under Article 17 of MAR. 
 
For further information please contact: 
 
Quantum Blockchain Technologies Plc 
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive 
Chairman                                          +39 335 296573 
 
SP Angel Corporate Finance (Nominated Adviser & Broker) 
Jeff Keating 
                                                                                          +44 
(0)20 3470 0470 
 
Leander (Financial PR) 
Christian 
Taylor-Wilkinson 
+44 (0) 7795 168 157 
 
About Quantum Blockchain Technologies Plc 
 
QBT (AIM: QBT) is an AIM listed investment company which has recently realigned 
its strategic focus to technology related investments, with special regard to 
Quantum computing, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and AI sectors. The Company has 
commenced an aggressive R&D and investment programme in the dynamic world of 
Blockchain Technology, which includes cryptocurrency mining and other advanced 
blockchain applications. 
 
Glossary of Terms: 
 
ASIC: An Application-Specific Integrated Circuit is an integrated circuit chip 
customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. 
ASIC chips are typically fabricated using metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) 
technology, as MOS integrated circuit chips 
 
CPU: The central processing unit (CPU) is the unit which performs most of the 
processing inside a computer. It processes all instructions received by 
software running on the PC and by other hardware components and acts as a 
powerful calculator. 
 
FPGA: A field-programmable gate array is an integrated circuit designed to be 
configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing - hence the term 
"field-programmable". The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a 
hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an 
application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). 
 
GPU: A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a computer chip that renders graphics 
and images by performing rapid mathematical calculations. 
 
Nanometer: A nanometer is a unit of measurement that is equivalent to one 
billionth of a meter. It is widely used as a scale for building tiny, complex, 
and atomic-scale computing and electronic components, such as ASIC chips. 
 
Pool Mining: As part of bitcoin mining, mining "pools" are a network of miners 
that work together to mine a block, then split the block reward among the pool 
miners. Mining pools are a good way for miners to combine their resources to 
increase the probability of mining a block, and also contribute to the overall 
health and decentralization of the bitcoin network. 
 
SHA-256: Secure Hashing Algorithm (SHA)-256 is the hash function and mining 
algorithm of the Bitcoin protocol, referring to the cryptographic hash function 
that outputs a 256 bits long value. 
 
Quantum Annealing (QA):  which also includes adiabatic quantum computation, is 
a  quantum computing method used to find the optimal solution of problems 
involving a large number of solutions, by taking advantage of properties 
specific to quantum physics like quantum tunnelling, entanglement and 
superposition. 
 
Quantum Logic Gates:  Is a rudimentary quantum circuit operating on a small 
number of qubits. They are the analogues for quantum computers to classical 
logic gates for conventional digital computers. Quantum logic gates are 
reversible, unlike many classical logic gates. 
 
Qubit: A classical bit can be in two states, it can be either zero or it can be 
one. A quantum bit or qubit, however, can be in a sort of zero state and in a 
one state at the same time. This situation is called a superposition of 

(quantum) states. Qubits have some very particular properties: for instance, it 
is not possible to make copies of qubits. 
 
 
 
END 
 
 

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