Recently, top quantum computing research firm Project 11 launched the Q-day prize, a global tournament that challenges developers worldwide to break Bitcoin’s cryptographic key using quantum tech. Project 11, who announced the competition on X in the late hours of April 16, 2025, clearly indicated that the developers would be going against a toy version of Bitcoin’s cryptography using Shor’s algorithm on a quantum computer. The firm also stated that it is offering 1 BTC (currently valued at $84,382) to the first team to crack the key within a year.
According to Project 11, the purpose of this tournament is to identify the level of threat quantum technology poses against Bitcoin and whether its current security setup, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), is still secure. Thus, if a winner emerges in the contest, over 6 million BTC worth about $500 billion is at risk, as over 10 million Bitcoin addresses have been exposed to the general public. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin community is aware of this emerging foe and is working on solutions to protect the largest cryptocurrency in the market.
One such solution is the Bitcoin improvement proposal (BIP) introduced earlier this month by Agustin Cruz, which suggested a network-wide shift from legacy wallets to post-quantum secured wallets. However, implementing the proposal would require a hard fork, making it nearly impossible to get a unanimous vote from the community. On the other hand, another quantum firm, BTQ, proposed that Bitcoin shift from proof-of-work to Coarse-Grained Boson Sampling (CGBS), a quantum-based alternative.
However, like BIP, CGBS also requires a hard fork, and the community doesn’t look ready to embrace that type of change. Nevertheless, the Q-day prize is undoubtedly a wake-up call to the Bitcoin community to start planning for a quantum secure future. If any team succeeds in breaking even a bit of the cryptographic key, the blockchain industry as a whole will be ushered into the “Quantum Era.”
