Responding to the Federal Reserve’s Harvest Now, Decrypt Later warning with standards aligned, production ready rails.
A recent Federal Reserve staff paper, "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later," outlines a severe and compounding risk to financial privacy and integrity. The paper highlights how adversaries can capture and store public ledgers and encrypted network traffic today, at minimal cost, to decrypt them later once quantum computing becomes practical. Because distributed ledgers preserve complete histories, any sensitive information that is inferable from signatures, transaction metadata, or exposed public keys can be revealed later. The Fed’s core message is stark: upgrading to post-quantum cryptography in the future cannot protect data that has already been exposed under vulnerable algorithms. Each day that financial systems continue to rely on quantum-vulnerable encryption adds to a permanent reservoir of data waiting to be decrypted, where time itself becomes an attack surface, and delay becomes a compounding liability.
The Federal Reserve paper underscores that not all data face equal risk. Long lived data and controls are at the highest risk, for example, issuer and administrator keys, contract deployment and upgrade paths, and payment messages that must remain confidential for many years. Public disclosure of these controls, or the ability to forge them in the future, can undermine confidence even if the operational environment looks normal today. The practical takeaway is clear: defend privileged functions first. Protect the keys, contracts, and controls that anchor trust in your system. Then extend post-quantum security outward as wallets, developer tools, and partner infrastructure adopt native post-quantum support.
PQFIF, the Post Quantum Financial Infrastructure Framework, provides a migration playbook that regulated institutions can adopt and auditors can verify. It emphasizes investor protection and market integrity, and maps controls to recognized standards so that programs can show measurable progress. The framework promotes crypto agility, clear key management practices, and dual stack transitions where classical and post-quantum signatures operate side by side during the changeover. It aligns with NIST’s selections, including ML KEM for key establishment, ML DSA for digital signatures, and SLH DSA for hash-based signatures, and with United States guidance under CNSA 2.0. These references give risk committees and supervisors a stable target and an evidence based way to judge whether migrations are on track.
BTQ’s approach is designed to fit this path. QSSN hardens the highest impact issuer and payment controls with dual signatures so existing infrastructure continues to work while post-quantum assurances are added and logged for audit. QCIM with CASH supplies the performance headroom needed to run post-quantum cryptography at scale, from terminals and secure elements to data centers, with consistent latency and strong side channel resistance. Together these rails let institutions act now, reduce harvest now exposure going forward, and document each step in a manner that aligns with the Federal Reserve’s risk framing and the PQFIF roadmap.
What Harvest Now, Decrypt Later means in plain language
Imagine a vault made of tinted glass, where no one from the outside can see inside and it feels secure. But someone decides to record the vault anyway, filming the vault day after day and storing the footage. Years later, the tint fades, and suddenly every detail that was once hidden becomes visible (even in recordings taken years prior). That’s exactly how Harvest Now, Decrypt Later works. Adversaries can copy public ledgers, payment messages, and encrypted network traffic today, storing them cheaply while waiting for quantum decryption to become practical. When that quantum moment comes, today’s protections can fail retroactively, exposing years of sensitive financial history
Two facts follow from the Federal Reserve paper:
- Upgrading to post-quantum security in the future doesn’t protect the past. Data created before the upgrade can still be revealed once quantum tools mature.
- Time itself has become an attack surface. Each day adds more vulnerable material to an attacker’s archive - which is why urgency matters now, not later.
What to protect first and why
Not all keys and controls carry the same risk. The most critical functions are those that mint and burn tokens, pause or upgrade contracts, deploy core logic, and sign payment messages. If an attacker can forge these actions in the future, confidence in the entire system can unravel quickly.
A credible migration plan protects these privileged operations first. Protection then expands to custody flows and finally to end user transactions as wallets, developer tools, and standards mature. This sequence removes the largest failure modes while keeping the customer experience steady.
Policy and standards signals that establish legitimacy
PQFIF presents a roadmap that regulated institutions can follow. The framework emphasizes investor protection, market integrity, and alignment with national and international standards. It gives risk committees, auditors, and supervisors a clear reference for measuring progress.
Standards bodies have set clear markers. NIST has introduced the first set of post-quantum standards: ML KEM for key establishment, ML DSA for digital signatures, and SLH DSA for stateless hash based signatures. United States national security guidance known as CNSA 2.0 provides a glide path that extends into the early and middle years of the next decade. These signals give technology teams a stable target for design and certification.
The BTQ approach
QSSN, Quantum Secure Stablecoin Network
QSSN is a control layer that adds post-quantum protection to the highest impact issuer actions. It covers mint and burn, contract deployment, administrative upgrades, and pause or recovery functions. These operations are signed twice, once with a classical key and once with a post-quantum key. Current infrastructure verifies the classical signature. The post-quantum signature creates forward security and a clear audit record.
Issuers integrate QSSN at the control plane without changing end user wallets or existing exchange and merchant connections. The user experience stays the same. Operators gain a measurable increase in assurance for the actions that protect the most value. This approach lets programs reduce risk immediately while broader ecosystems adopt native post-quantum tools.
Why it is relevant now: Harvest now, decrypt later turns time into exposure. Protecting privileged functions first removes the most catastrophic failure modes while keeping performance and operations steady. QSSN is designed for this first phase of migration. It produces evidence that risk teams and auditors can verify and it fits current operational playbooks.
Alignment with standards: QSSN is built to track United States and international guidance. It supports the NIST families for post-quantum migration, including ML KEM in FIPS 203, ML DSA in FIPS 204, and SLH DSA in FIPS 205. It follows the direction set by United States CNSA 2.0 for critical systems and is structured so that controls can be attested with simple, timestamped proofs. QuINSA has advanced QSSN as a global standards initiative toward ITU, ISO, ETSI, and IEEE channels, which helps institutions move in step across regions.
Policy recognition: The Post Quantum Financial Infrastructure Framework cites QSSN as a model for quantum secure tokenized deposits. This reference signals that the design is practical for regulated environments and aligned with the path supervisors expect to see, including clear milestones and compatibility with NIST selections.QSSN hardens the core of stablecoin and deposit token systems without asking customers to change behavior. It creates a standards aligned, audit ready trail for the operations that matter most and gives institutions a direct way to begin post-quantum adoption today.
QCIM with CASH, hardware that makes PQC practical at scale
QCIM brings cryptography closer to the data by executing operations inside memory, and CASH is the cryptographic engine that powers this approach. Processing in memory lets computation occur where the data resides. That reduces data movement and lifts throughput per watt compared with traditional CPU and GPU paths. The result is high performance with consistent latency, which is essential for financial and network systems.
CASH accelerates the NIST post-quantum families and the supporting primitives that real systems depend on. It covers ML KEM for key establishment, ML DSA for digital signatures, SLH DSA for stateless hash-based signatures, and symmetric and hashing functions such as AES, SHA 3, Keccak, and KMAC. These capabilities allow issuers, payment providers, and infrastructure operators to enable post-quantum protections across both control and data planes without rearchitecting existing stacks.
Why it matters
Measured results show clear gains over traditional secure hardware. AES processing can be up to five times faster. The engine can produce about one million digital signatures each second for real time verification and authentication. Energy use per operation is under one microjoule. The design remains compact enough for smart cards, IoT devices, and hardware wallets while scaling to hardware security modules, payment terminals, data centers, and secure network devices.
This architecture also resolves a long standing constraint in secure hardware where teams often trade performance for physical security or cryptographic agility. Computing in memory changes the balance. CASH supports side channel resistant implementations, including domain oriented masking, with far smaller performance penalties. That enables stronger protection for edge devices in defense and critical infrastructure, reliable roots of trust for AI accelerators and content provenance systems, and hardened cryptography for digital asset and payments stacks.
Standards and integration
QCIM with CASH is built to support migration to NIST FIPS 203, FIPS 204, and FIPS 205 and follows United States guidance, such as CNSA 2.0. This alignment lets regulated programs adopt post-quantum cryptography without disrupting current workflows and provides clear, timestamped evidence for audits. Integration paths match real product roadmaps. Partners can license synthesizable silicon IP, adopt a discrete coprocessor, or plan for future chiplet based configurations that fit modern multi die systems. CASH is being merged into QCIM to deliver crypto agile acceleration, allowing new protocols and upgrades to be deployed on devices already in the field as standards evolve.
The outcome is straightforward. QCIM with CASH supplies the performance headroom and efficiency required to run post-quantum cryptography at scale, from the edge to the data center, while preserving service levels and keeping operational playbooks intact.
Why action is urgent
- Harvest Now, Decrypt Later turns delay into exposure; every day of inaction adds to the stockpile of data that adversaries can eventually unlock.
- Privileged controls represent concentrated risk. Securing these now prevents the most catastrophic failure modes - with minimal friction for users or partners.
- The policy groundwork is already in place. The Federal Reserve has framed the risk. PQFIF outlines implementation paths. NIST and CNSA have set recognized standards. The moment has arrived to move from debate to deployment.
The takeaway
Quantum risk is no longer theoretical. The Federal Reserve paper makes clear that financial ledgers and payment networks face tangible exposure today - not in some distant future. PQFIF provides a standards-aligned framework that regulators and auditors can trust. The responsible course is to begin the transition now, prioritizing the controls that anchor trust in digital finance. With QSSN and QCIM powered by CASH, institutions gain a post-quantum foundation for digital money and payments - one that fortifies the core without disrupting existing systems.