BroadChain, April 25, 18:02 - According to CryptoSlate, on April 24, Project Eleven awarded the Q-Day Prize to researcher Giancarlo Lelli. Lelli successfully derived a 15-bit elliptic curve private key from a public key using publicly available quantum hardware with approximately 70 qubits, achieving a 512-fold improvement over the 6-bit demonstration in September 2025.
This attack employs a variant of Shor's algorithm targeting the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP), which is the mathematical foundation of Bitcoin's digital signature scheme. Currently, no known quantum computer can crack a real Bitcoin wallet, and 256-bit elliptic curve security remains far beyond the capabilities of existing quantum hardware.
Notably, on March 31, Google lowered its resource estimate for cracking ECDLP-256 and set a target timeline for migrating to quantum-resistant cryptography after 2029; Cloudflare subsequently followed suit, while the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) set migration milestones between 2028 and 2035. On-chain data shows that approximately 6.93 million BTC are potentially at risk from quantum attacks due to public key exposure.
The Bitcoin community has proposed BIP 360 and BIP 361 to facilitate migration to quantum-resistant output types, but coordination within a decentralized network remains the biggest challenge.