Has Bitcoin Been Hacked?

Hey guys, I’m curious about something and hoping some of you can help me out. I just came across some news saying that Bitcoin has been hacked. Here’s a quick translation of the article: "In just 320 seconds: Bitcoin hacked with first-ever quantum attack. Chinese researchers have cracked Bitcoin's encryption using quantum computing." So, if this is true, should we really be freaking out about our bitcoins being at risk? Seems to me like this is a pretty unique situation. Plus, the community has been aware of this potential issue for a while now, and the same tech that cracks the encryption could be used to enhance our security. Am I thinking about this correctly? Also, do you think today’s price drop is connected to this news?

I'm not going to believe unknown sites for this. If they want to be convincing, choose a rich Bitcoin address, and sign a message. I'm not really worried about Bitcoin being broken by quantum computing. If that's possible, all online banking and other encryption would be at risk, which has a much larger impact on everything globally.

there is nothing online in other news related this. if this is something true, I would see many more highlights online... I would have some doubts about the ones mentioned in this article. http://www.ekadeauditores.com/ ... who they are? why there is nothing around bitcoin? if they now such news why there is nothing online? Here there is the original post ... and it's a clear clickbait with an AI image on it. https://es.linkedin.com/posts/carlos-lopez-iglesias-7524041b0_hackear-bitcoin-quantumcomputing-activity-7302398440926244864-LC8t So they have the news "an impressive news" and no link or whatever? how he is the only one that has this great insight? Yes absolutely. Bitcoin is a tiny element compared to other economic elements. in the same time (since it's "audited every 10 minutes") if something would be real, price will just collapse in matter of hours.

Another FUD to make people panic and sell due to FOMO. I don't think this is true, because the news should have been everywhere in the internet and on TV. Bitcoin community knows about the threat of quantum computers to bitcoin security but before such will happen bitcoin devs will find a solution to it.

Sounds to like the news in and of itself is the attempted hack.  Someone trying to create FUD in order pick up some cheap sats.

Careful... people are always looking for creative ways to get hits on their vague articles. Most of the time they don't care if it's legitimate or not, so long as they go viral. If it were true by even a fraction, things would be so different right now. Trust me. LinkedIn sucks. Glad I deleted my account years ago

If quantum computers could actually break Bitcoin's encryption already, it would likely be major headline news across the internet.  Quantum computing does pose a potential systemic threat to encryption in the future, but its not an imminent danger that can break Bitcoin's security right now imho.  I agree we should view bold claims from unreliable sources with skepticism.  Theres a lot of misinformation out there.  But no need to panic yet about quantum computers and Bitcoin.

Googled about Quantum computers breaking ECDSA and there are no news about this. Fake article? Worst I found was a piece “would microsoft’s new state of matter be a threat to Bitcoin consensus?” and it’s all speculation about the new tech which isn’t even commercially ready yet.

The funny thing is, it said "encryption algorithm in Bitcoin" while talking about ECDSA which is a Digital Signature Algorithm. Also by saying "decrypting the private keys of wallets" in that context, that is a big takeaway that whoever wrote this doesn't know how Bitcoin works. It even hints that the author is someone who calls an address: "wallet". It's a good thing that the majority of comments already recognized the LinkedIn post as hoax.

If vozpopuli dot com have account on this forum, i would leave them neutral feedback for linking website with garbage technical detail. Not only that, the news claim they did it with only 18 qubits quantum computer. While there are conflicting information about minimum required qubits to crack ECSA, lowest one claim it requires 1500 qubits[1], while other says 13 million qubits[2]. Although i doubt 1500 qubits estimation is true. [1] https://security.stackexchange.com/a/96880 [2] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/02/breaking-245-bit-elliptic-curve-encryption-with-a-quantum-computer.html

As for me ,I need to evaluate the credibility of the article that you mentioned, it's from a LinkedIn post by Carlos López Iglesias , we all know that most of the time LinkedIn posts can be sensationalist or lack technical depth so the key claim here is that an 18-qubit quantum computer broke ECDSA which Bitcoin uses Quantum computing threats to Bitcoin aren't new but the specifics matter I remember that breaking ECDSA with quantum computers requires solving the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem shor's algorithm can do this but it needs a large number of stable qubit Current quantum computers are nowhere near that IBM has a 433-qubit processor but qubit count isn't the only factor, error rates and coherence times matter too. An 18-qubit system seems too small for such a task, there is a high chance that the article oversimplified or the experiment was a simulation or a specific case

Quantum computers could break ECC. If there is really a threat with quantum processors for Bitcoin, that will occur only if the public key is known. That is because it's highly more practical for an attacker, even using a quantum computer, to solve the ECC backwards trying to derive a private key from a public key, rather than try to brute-force private keys. But, if a UTXO hasn't been used as input in a transaction, then the public key is unknown. In simpler terms, if the funds have never moved out of an address then the public key is not revealed. Which means that, theoretically, sending some coins to address X and leaving the coins there, renders them unlikely to be swiped due to quantum threat. I agree with LoyceV in this. According to my explanation above, the most "hackable" wallets would be the massive wallets in which exchanges keep their funds. They keep spending from those, so the public keys are revealed.

There's an article from 2022 that's still relevant for anyone who fears that it's possible to hack BTC using quantum computers. What is much more important for everyone is that if it were possible to hack BTC, that would be the least of our problems - because then practically everything else would also be susceptible to hacking.

we are now well under 80k so it is working well

A regular computer can simulate up to 30-50 qubits.

Hahaha funny Atom computing is 1180 qubit and can't perform such hack and an 18 qubit is claiming such. The highest it can be used for is scientific research not hacks. Source to World largest quantum computer: https://www.spinquanta.com/news-detail/discover-the-worlds-largest-quantum-computer-in20250106092507#:~:text=The%20World%27s%20Largest%20Superconducting%20Quantum,a%20total%20of%201%2C121%20qubits. No major news outlet shared it. I wouldn't even had knew about it if I didn't stumble upon this thread.

Well, I could smell something like that, that's why I put hacking in inverted commas. Yes when I saw the article it was fresh and didn't know if more media would follow but that hasn't been the case, in some cases, they have even flatly denied it. Thank you all for the replies, which I have found very informative. I see no point in keeping the thread open, so I'm going to lock it.