Quantum 15-Bit ECC Crack Wins 1 BTC Bounty as Bitcoin Holds Steady at $77.6K

Bitcoin trades stably near $77.65K despite a quantum breakthrough cracking a 15-bit elliptic curve key, with the latest update awarding a 1 BTC bounty (~$78K) to the researcher. The story began April 24 with demonstrations using public cloud hardware to break a key from 32,767 possibilities—a 512-fold advance over prior 6-bit efforts—highlighting long-term risks to 256-bit security and $450-600B in exposed public-key addresses. Markets shrugged off the news with subdued volatility (BTC flat, ETH $2,323, SOL $86, XRP $1.44), prediction odds unmoved (BTC 2026 ATH 18.5%, ETH $10K 4%), and focus shifting to post-quantum migration plans.