Quantum Cryptographer Wins 1 BTC Bounty in Hacking Challenge

Independent cryptography researcher Giancarlo Lelli has derived a 15-bit elliptic curve key via a publicly accessible quantum computer, winning a 1 BTC bounty from post-quantum startup Project Eleven in the process.

What's the Scoop?

• Largest Attack: Researcher Giancarlo Lelli has won Project Eleven’s 1 BTC “Q-Day Prize” after successfully deriving a 15-bit elliptic curve private key from a public key using a publicly accessible quantum computer. In its blog post announcing the hack, Project Eleven described it as, "the largest public demonstration to date of the attack class that threatens Bitcoin, Ethereum, and over $2.5 trillion in ECC-secured digital assets."
• Major Leap: According to Project Eleven, quantum attacks on elliptic curve cryptography has moved from theory to practice over the last seven months. Compared to Steve Tippeconnic's 6-bit demonstration in September 2025 (the first public break on quantum hardware), this most recent 15-bit cryptography crack represents a 512× improvement.
• Not Practical: Bitcoin uses 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography to anchor its signature schemes, which is in a completly different universe of security than than the 15-bit key broken in this demonstration. While a 15-bit key has 2¹⁵ (32,768) possibilities, a 256-bit key would has 2²⁵⁶ (~1.16×10⁷⁷) possibilities, making Bitcoin's encryption scheme ~2.2×10⁷² times harder to crack (220,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).