Researcher Claims 1 Bitcoin Prize for Achieving Largest Quantum Attack on Underlying Technology

The threat of quantum attacks on bitcoin has become more tangible after an independent researcher broke a 15-bit elliptic curve key on publicly accessible quantum hardware, earning a 1 bitcoin prize. The quantum security startup Project Eleven awarded the prize, worth approximately $78,000, to Giancarlo Lelli for achieving the largest public demonstration of this type of attack to date. Elliptic curve cryptography is a crucial component of bitcoin's security, enabling wallets to prove control over funds without revealing private keys. However, quantum computers can potentially exploit this using Shor's algorithm, a quantum technique first proposed in 1994. Lelli's achievement does not immediately threaten bitcoin, as it uses 256-bit elliptic curve security, but it does demonstrate the rapid progress being made in quantum attacks. The previous public break was a 6-bit demonstration using IBM's 133-qubit quantum computer, and Lelli's result expanded this by a factor of 512 in just seven months. Theoretical estimates suggest that the resource requirements for a full 256-bit attack are decreasing rapidly, with a recent Google Research paper estimating the cost to be below 500,000 physical qubits. This has significant implications for bitcoin, with approximately 6.9 million coins, or one-third of the total supply, potentially vulnerable to quantum attacks. Developers have proposed migration paths, including the addition of quantum-safe address types, to mitigate this risk.