Overview
- Project Eleven, which awarded its 1 bitcoin Q‑Day Prize on Friday, said Giancarlo Lelli used a public quantum computer and a Shor‑style method to recover a private key from a 15‑bit elliptic curve public key.
- The demonstration is the largest public elliptic‑curve crack so far, expanding a 6‑bit 2025 result by a factor of 512.
- Elliptic‑curve signatures secure Bitcoin and many blockchains, but the new mark does not threaten 256‑bit production keys today.
- New studies cut estimated resources to break 256‑bit ECC to fewer than 500,000 physical qubits in a Google analysis and to about 10,000 using a Caltech and Oratomic neutral‑atom design.
- About 6.9 million BTC have public keys visible on‑chain, heightening calls for migration paths such as Bitcoin’s BIP‑360 and adding urgency to Ethereum’s post‑quantum work.