A quantum computer was able to break a 15-bit elliptic-curve cryptographic key, according to the quantum computing security research company Project 11.
The Bitcoin community continues to debate whether cryptographically relevant quantum computers are imminent or decades away. Project Eleven, a quantum security research company, awarded a prize to researcher Giancarlo Lelli for using a quantum computer to break a 15-bit elliptic-curve key — a small-scale version of the same cryptography used in Bitcoin, which relies on far larger 256-bit keys.
Lelli was able to derive a private key from the public key paired to it, using a “variant” of Shor’s algorithm, an integer factorization algorithm for quantum computers, according to Project 11’s announcement on Friday. Bitcoin’s keys are 256 bits long, representing a “large” gap from the 15-bit key Lelli was able to crack, Project 11 said.
However, the gap between Bitcoin’s 256-bit keys and the number of bits a quantum computer can factor has “fallen sharply” since 2025. Project 11 added.
“The resource requirements for this type of attack keep dropping, and the barrier to running it in practice is dropping with them,” Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, said. The attack is the “largest public demonstration” of a quantum computer breaking an ECDSA key, and it threatens about $2.5 trillion in value secured by elliptic-curve cryptography algorithms, according to Project 11.held in older wallet addresses whose public keys are exposed, according to crypto industry executives and computer scientists.
Speaking at a Cointelegraph panel at Paris Blockchain Week in April, Blockstream CEO Adam Back said that the Bitcoin industry should“Quantum computing still has a lot to prove. Current systems are essentially lab experiments. I’ve followed the field for over 25 years, and progress has been incremental,” Back said.
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