Project Eleven said researcher Giancarlo Lelli won its 1 Bitcoin Q-Day award after cracking a 15-bit elliptic curve encryption key on publicly accessible quantum hardware using a variant of Shor’s algorithm, solving one target from 32,767 possible keys. The reported result, described as a proof-of-concept benchmark and a 512-fold improvement over the prior public result in seven months, drew skepticism from Bitcoin developers, who argued the same outcome could be reproduced with random bits and therefore may not represent a meaningful cryptographic breakthrough. While the test involved a tiny key size rather than production-grade cryptography, the issue is closely watched because elliptic curve cryptography secures Bitcoin signatures and other digital systems. Project Eleven also said about 6.9 million BTC in static addresses remain vulnerable to future quantum threats, while Bitcoin’s proposed BIP-360 aims to introduce quantum-resistant addresses.