The researcher announced the first quantum breach of Bitcoin security

An unknown researcher took a small step toward overcoming Bitcoin network cryptographic protection. This event sparked discussions about the actual significance of the achieved result.

Representatives of Project Eleven awarded a reward of 1 BTC to developer Giancarlo Lelli as part of the "Q-Day Prize." He was able to compute the private key based on the public address using a quantum computer.

During testing, the developers used a 15-bit elliptic curve. This value is significantly smaller than the 256-bit standard. It is this standard that Bitcoin and most modern blockchains use. The organizers called the result the largest public demonstration of a quantum attack on cryptography — this event moves the threat from theory to practice.

However, the scale gap remains enormous. The search space for a 15-bit key is just over 32,000 combinations. Bitcoin security relies on extremely large numbers. Modern computing machines cannot brute-force them.

Critics quickly responded to the organizers' statements. Community authors noted that the method heavily depends on classical verification. It is not purely a quantum computation. In simple terms, the system was unable to independently perform the most complex part of the attack.