Researcher Cracks 15-Bit ECC Key, Wins 1 Bitcoin Reward

Independent researcher Giancarlo Lelli has been awarded the Q-Day Prize and 1 Bitcoin by quantum security startup Project Eleven for successfully cracking the cryptographic keys protecting Bitcoin. Giancarlo Lelli utilized publicly available quantum hardware and a variant of Shor's algorithm to break a 15-bit encryption key among 32,767 possibilities. The difficulty of this quantum attack is 512 times greater than the 6-bit key record set in September 2025. Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden stated that the resource requirements for such attacks continue to decline, with approximately 6.9 million Bitcoins currently residing in vulnerable static addresses, including 1 million Bitcoins held by Satoshi Nakamoto. The Bitcoin network has proposed BIP-360 to introduce quantum-resistant address types, and platforms such as Ethereum, Ripple, and Tron have also begun publishing plans for transitioning to post-quantum defenses.