Project 11 has launched a competition where people can win 1 BTC if they break Bitcoin’s Elliptic Curve cryptography and an ECC key using a quantum computer with Shor’s algorithm. The aim is to break the biggest ECC key possible.
According to them, 6 million BTC in over 10 million addresses are possibly vulnerable to quantum computers because of their exposed public keys. That's a value of over $500 billion. The aim of the initiative is to test how serious of a threat quantum computers present.
It hasn't even been a month since Fillippone shared this
post, and the race to start the crack has already begun. We've been expecting this stage of attempts to happen sooner or later, but the proactive ones have chosen to make it sooner. At this point, it's becoming more clearer by day that people's interest in using QC to break ECC is getting stronger.
Competition Rules:
- Individuals and teams can sign up. No institutional affiliation is needed.
From all the videos i have watched on QC, i don't think i have seen any personal owned.
probably, not more than 90% of world population have come in contact with it.
This should be more of an institutional competition, but at the same time, they will have to weigh their options considering how expensive it is.
Does the 1BTC prize actually worth the time taken to run a QC till 2026?, i don't think so.