Project Eleven Awards 1 BTC for Largest Public Quantum ECC Attack on Bitcoin

Project Eleven awarded researcher Giancarlo Lelli 1 BTC (~$78,000) for breaking a 15-bit elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) key in ~45 minutes using 27 physical qubits—a 512x advance over prior demos and the largest public quantum attack to date. The April 24 announcement triggered Bitcoin developers to dispute the quantum nature, arguing classical methods were used, but the prize was confirmed amid debates on threats to 6.9 million BTC (~$2.5T) in legacy P2PK addresses with exposed public keys. While 256-bit ECC needs 10,000–500,000 qubits, the milestone fuels volatility, risk reassessments, and urgency for quantum-resistant upgrades.