Quantum Computers Just Cracked Bitcoin's Crypto And It Only Cost 1 BTC to Prove It
Project Eleven paid out 1 $BTC to researcher Giancarlo Lelli for the largest quantum attack on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to date, A 512x jump from September 2025.
Why it matters:
🔹 ECC secures Bitcoin, Ethereum & $2.5T+ in digital assets
🔹 Done on public cloud quantum hardware, not a secret lab
🔹 Google: full 256-bit attack now needs <500K qubits (was millions)
🔹 Caltech: as low as 10K qubits on neutral-atom chips
🔹 Google targeting quantum-secure by 2029
The Exposed Risk:
⚠️ ~6.9M BTC sit in wallets with visible public keys, directly vulnerable long-term.
Key shift: 15-bit → 256-bit is now viewed as an engineering problem, not physics.
Action for holders:
✅ Never reuse addresses
✅ Always send change to fresh wallets
✅ Track post-quantum BIP proposals
Bitcoin's post-quantum migration isn't "if", it's "when."
