Quantum computers cracking 15-digit ECC keys, Bitcoin's 256-bit security remains unaffected, but migration countdown accelerates

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On April 25, Project Eleven announced today that the Q-Day award was given to researcher Giancarlo Lelli, who used publicly accessible quantum hardware to successfully derive a 15-bit elliptic curve private key from a public key, representing the largest-scale public demonstration to date, a 512-fold improvement over the 6-bit demonstration in September 2025.
Lelli used a variant of Shor’s algorithm targeting the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem, which is the mathematical foundation of Bitcoin’s signature scheme. The awarded hardware has approximately 70 qubits. Currently, no known quantum computer can crack real Bitcoin wallets, and Bitcoin’s 256-bit elliptic curve security remains far beyond current quantum capabilities. Notably, Google downgraded the resource estimate for ECDLP-256 on March 31 and set a quantum cryptography migration target after 2029. Cloudflare followed suit, and the UK’s NCSC also set migration milestones between 2028 and 2035.
On-chain data shows that approximately 6.93M BTC are at potential quantum risk due to exposed public keys. The Bitcoin community has proposed BIP 360 and BIP 361 to promote quantum-resistant output type migration, but the coordination challenge within decentralized networks remains the biggest obstacle.

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