Giancarlo Lelli, an independent researcher, has claimed a one Bitcoin prize for achieving the largest quantum break of elliptic curve cryptography to date; he successfully derived a private key from its public counterpart across a 32,767-element search space using a variant of Shor’s algorithm. This result represents a 512x increase over the previous public demonstration in September 2025, accelerating the timeline for potential threats to digital assets secured by ECC, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. “The resource requirements for this type of attack keep dropping, and the barrier to running it in practice is dropping with them,” said Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, who awarded the prize. Google’s commitment to being quantum-secure by 2029 means the window for proactively migrating to post-quantum cryptography is shrinking.
Lelli Breaks 15-bit ECC Key with Shor’s Algorithm
This demonstration is noteworthy because it wasn’t conducted by a well-funded national laboratory or private company, suggesting a lower barrier to entry for potential attackers. Theoretical estimates for attacking a full 256-bit key, the scale currently used by Bitcoin, have also fallen sharply, with recent research from Caltech and Oratomic suggesting a viable attack could require as few as 10,000 qubits in a neutral-atom architecture. Approximately 6.9 million Bitcoin currently reside in wallets with publicly visible keys, rendering them vulnerable to this type of quantum attack, and all blockchains relying on ECC face similar risks. Pruden stated that the window to prepare is closing, referencing Google’s commitment to achieving quantum security by 2029 and emphasizing the urgent need for proactive migration to post-quantum cryptography. Project Eleven is now focusing its next challenge on the intersection of advanced AI models and quantum cryptanalysis, further exploring the evolving threat landscape.
The increasing pace of progress in quantum computing attacks on encryption is forcing a reevaluation of timelines for transitioning to post-quantum cryptography, as demonstrated by recent achievements in breaking elliptic curve cryptography. This practical demonstration is particularly significant given the source of the attack. “The winning submission came from an independent researcher working on cloud-accessible hardware,” explained Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven.
The distance from 15 bits to 256 bits is large, but the gap is increasingly viewed as an engineering problem and not a fundamental physics problem.
$2.5 Trillion in ECC Assets Face Quantum Threat
This achievement represents a 512x increase in capability compared to Steve Tippeconnic’s 6-bit break in September 2025, signaling an accelerating pace of progress in quantum cryptanalysis and intensifying concerns about the security of blockchain technologies. The implications extend to a substantial portion of the digital economy, with over $2.5 trillion in ECC-secured assets now potentially vulnerable to these evolving quantum threats. Pruden added that the accessibility of this technology emphasizes the urgency for proactive migration to post-quantum cryptography, particularly as Google aims to be quantum-secure by 2029.
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
