A quantum computer cracking a 15-digit ECC key; no threat to Bitcoin’s 256-bit security yet, but the migration countdown is accelerating

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ME News: On April 25 (UTC+8), Project Eleven awarded its Q-Day prize today to researcher Giancarlo Lelli. Using publicly accessible quantum hardware, he successfully derived a 15-digit elliptic curve private key from a public key, marking the largest such publicly demonstrated scale to date—512 times higher than the 6-digit demonstration in September 2025. Lelli used a variant of Shor’s algorithm for the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem, which is the mathematical foundation of the Bitcoin signature scheme. The rewarded hardware has about 70 qubits. At present, there is no known quantum computer that can break real Bitcoin wallets, and Bitcoin’s 256-bit elliptic-curve security remains far beyond current quantum capabilities. Notably, on March 31, Google lowered its ECDLP-256 resource estimates and set a target for migrating to post-quantum cryptography after 2029. Cloudflare then followed suit, and the UK NCSC also set migration milestones from 2028 to 2035. On-chain data shows that currently about 6.93 million BTC face potential quantum risk due to exposed public keys. The Bitcoin community has proposed BIP 360 and BIP 361 to drive migration to post-quantum output types, but coordinating across a decentralized network remains the biggest challenge. (Source: ChainCatcher)
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