A week-long coding challenge organized by StarkWare reduced the estimated computational cost for quantum-resistant Bitcoin transactions from approximately $320 to $66, an 80% reduction. AI-assisted developers achieved the breakthrough by optimizing GPU code.
Coinbase is building post-quantum custody infrastructure to protect digital assets against future quantum computing threats, with Head of Cryptography Yehuda Lindell outlining plans to support multiple signature schemes beyond traditional Multi-Party Computation methods.
White-hat researchers transferred 52.37 Bitcoin linked to the July Coldcard wallet exploit into an address controlled by the Crypto Recovery Trust. The move is intended to facilitate the return of rescued Bitcoin to verified owners of the compromised wallets.
Swiss Bitcoin Pay, a non-custodial bitcoin payment processor based in Neuchâtel, shut down its entire server infrastructure on Monday after discovering a malicious intruder had gained access to its internal systems. The company warned that customer email addresses, Bitcoin addresses, IBANs, transaction history, and hashed passwords may have been compromised.
Blockstream has refused to pay a ransom for nearly 600 bitcoin still held by hackers who exploited the Liquid Network on September 6, draining approximately 4,000 BTC (worth $320 million) from federation reserves. The attackers had demanded a 10% bounty payment and used on-chain messages to communicate their demands.
A collaboration between Google Quantum AI, the Ethereum Foundation, and Stanford has published research showing optimized quantum circuits that reduce the resources needed for a key operation in potential quantum attacks on Bitcoin and Ethereum's cryptography, requiring only 1,151 logical qubits compared to previous estimates.
A crowdsourced challenge of over 100 researchers and AI agents reduced the quantum resource benchmark for a key operation in attacking Bitcoin and Ethereum by 86% in two months, requiring 1,151 logical qubits and 1.30 million T-gates.
Self-described white-hat hackers returned 3,400 of nearly 4,000 bitcoin stolen from the Liquid Network's federation reserves on September 6, but retained approximately 598.5 BTC worth $47 million. The sidechain remains frozen as Blockstream prepares a restart.
Self-described white-hat hackers returned 3,400 of nearly 4,000 bitcoin stolen from the Liquid Network's federation reserves on September 6, but retained approximately 598.5 BTC worth $47 million. The sidechain remains frozen as Blockstream prepares a restart.
The attacker behind the third wave of Coldcard hardware wallet exploits has moved approximately 97.09 BTC (about $7.7-7.8 million), representing 45% of funds stolen in that wave. The hacker routed the Bitcoin through THORChain and CoinJoin mixing services to obscure the trail, according to Galaxy Research.
Malone Lam, a 22-year-old Singapore man, is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington on Tuesday for a plea agreement hearing related to one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in U.S. history. Prosecutors allege he helped orchestrate a scheme in which callers posing as Google and Gemini staff defrauded a single victim of over $240 million in bitcoin, with proceeds allegedly spent on luxury cars and private jets.
Malone Lam, 22, is expected to plead guilty in federal court to orchestrating a $240-245 million Bitcoin theft by impersonating Google and Gemini staff to trick a Washington investor. A Singaporean co-conspirator also pleaded guilty.
Self-described white-hat hackers withdrew approximately 4,000 BTC (worth $320 million) from Blockstream's Liquid Network sidechain on September 6, forcing a network halt. The hackers are holding the funds until developers prove they've patched the critical vulnerability that enabled the exploit.
Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network paused operations after individuals claiming to be white-hat hackers withdrew approximately 4,000 BTC (worth $320 million) from the network's federation wallet, exploiting a vulnerability in Blockstream's Elements software. The hackers made a conditional offer regarding the funds.
Blockstream's Liquid Network disabled its bridge nodes after approximately 4,000 BTC ($320 million) were withdrawn from the federation wallet to a single address. The withdrawer left an on-chain message stating "we are whitehats."
A scan by Bitquery has identified 96,000 fake-address outputs that are clogging Bitcoin's unspent transaction output (UTXO) database. The analysis highlights how cheap OP_RETURN repetition and fake-address text impose significantly different costs on Bitcoin nodes.
Core Lightning issued an emergency warning after AI-generated bug reports identified real vulnerabilities in the Bitcoin Lightning Network software. Developers told operators to run nodes offline or upgrade to a forthcoming release, with vulnerability details under a two-week embargo.
A member of the Bitcoin Red Team told Decrypt that Chinese AI models are used far more than American models for security research because U.S. models frequently block cybersecurity-related queries, making Bitcoin software increasingly vulnerable as AI advances.
Coinkite released new firmware for Coldcard hardware wallets following a randomness vulnerability that enabled attackers to steal $114 million in Bitcoin, adding user-supplied entropy and stricter transaction checks.
Coinkite released firmware updates 5.6.1 and 1.5.1Q for Coldcard hardware wallets following disclosure of a seed-generation vulnerability that resulted in an $88.6 million Bitcoin theft. Users with affected seed phrases must create new wallets and transfer their Bitcoin.
Bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer BitBox released firmware version 9.26.5 to address severe security vulnerabilities discovered during internal security reviews that utilized AI models. The company confirmed no funds were stolen but urged users to update their devices.
A security flaw in Coldcard hardware wallets has led to the theft of over $115 million in Bitcoin, with 1,778.58 BTC swept from 8,680 addresses since July 30. Galaxy Research has been tracking the incident and supporting over 200 victims.
Coinbase, Block, BitGo and dozens of other cryptocurrency companies signed a Bitcoin Policy Institute letter calling on AI labs to provide qualified security researchers with access to advanced AI models, arguing that current safety guardrails block legitimate defenders while attackers face no such restrictions.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute, backed by Coinbase, Blockstream, and Strategy, launched an initiative urging AI companies to provide early access to frontier AI models for Bitcoin and open-source developers to strengthen cybersecurity defenses. The push follows an incident where a vetted Bitcoin researcher was blocked from accessing AI cybersecurity tools.
A security exploit in Coldcard's offline cryptocurrency storage devices led to approximately $130 million in losses, triggering a sharp increase in new Bitcoin addresses as users rushed to move funds to secure wallets. New Bitcoin addresses jumped from 260,000 to over 330,000 last week, reversing months of declining trends.
BTCPay Server disclosed a critical vulnerability that allowed attackers to remotely hijack Lightning Network nodes and drain bitcoin payment servers. Supporters have committed to a recovery bounty of 10% of any stolen funds recovered, capped at 3 BTC (approximately $190,000).
AnchorWatch CEO Rob Hamilton and his volunteer Bitcoin Red Team were restricted by OpenAI from conducting AI-powered security audits on Bitcoin repositories, forcing the researchers to turn to open-source Chinese AI models to continue their work.
Bitcoin security researchers including Rob Hamilton report being blocked by OpenAI and Anthropic from conducting white-hat security audits, forcing them to use unrestricted Chinese AI models—the same tools attackers are already using, as demonstrated by a recent autonomous AI-powered cyberattack on Taiwan's government.
Federal prosecutors have charged three men from St. Louis with planning to forcibly enter a Connecticut residence and compel the transfer of bitcoin connected to a theft valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison.
BTCPay Server disclosed a critical vulnerability being actively exploited and urged users to immediately update to version 2.4.2 or shut down their servers. Foundation and Citadel21 reported their Lightning nodes were drained, in some cases hours before the public alert.
Following a firmware vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets that affected seed generation, attackers have begun laundering stolen cryptocurrency, with 64 BTC ($4.17M) and 200 ETH ($380K) routed through mixers. At least 15 separate attackers are exploiting the vulnerability, with the largest controlling 1,159 BTC that remains unmoved, in what's being called the biggest hardware wallet exploit in crypto history with losses exceeding $30 million.
A volunteer group of 16 security researchers used AI tools to audit 390 Bitcoin-related open-source projects, discovering 4,962 potential vulnerabilities in approximately 30 hours, including 85 critical and 635 high-severity issues. The rapid security sweep was prompted by a recent $100 million Coldcard wallet exploit.
Zeus Wallet, a self-custodial Bitcoin Lightning Network wallet, shut down its infrastructure on Wednesday after experiencing a cybersecurity incident and is conducting a security audit before restoring services.
Federal prosecutors charged three St. Louis men—Sedric Louis, John Davis, and Martel Williams—for allegedly conspiring to rob a Connecticut man of hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin through a planned home invasion and kidnapping in Danbury in August 2024. The plot involved a violent carjacking and kidnapping but ultimately failed.
Federal prosecutors charged three Missouri men—Sedric Louis, John Davis, and Martel Williams—with conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery over an alleged August 2024 plot to kidnap a Bitcoin holder and steal cryptocurrency through a planned home invasion in Connecticut. The defendants have pleaded not guilty and face up to 20 years in prison.
Eric Halem, a former Los Angeles Police Department reserve officer, received a life sentence plus 15 years in state prison for his role in a December 2024 armed home invasion in Koreatown, where he and accomplices posed as police to rob a 17-year-old of a hard drive containing approximately $350,000 in Bitcoin.
Physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency holders have resulted in more than $30 million in losses during the first half of 2026, with home invasions becoming the most common method and France accounting for a disproportionate share of incidents. The trend puts 2026 on track to become the worst year on record for violent crypto thefts.
Non-custodial Bitcoin bridge Boltz halted all swap services indefinitely after a surge of AI-assisted hacking attempts over recent months outpaced the team's ability to patch vulnerabilities. The service connects Bitcoin's main chain with Lightning Network and Liquid sidechain.
Boltz, a non-custodial Bitcoin bridge enabling swaps between Bitcoin mainchain, Lightning Network, and Liquid sidechain, halted all services on August 3, 2026, citing an escalating wave of automated AI-assisted attacks that its small team could not patch fast enough. No user funds were compromised due to the platform's non-custodial architecture.
Bitcoin mining difficulty has fallen to 126.23 trillion, down 14-19.9% from 2026's peak in the third-deepest ASIC-era decline, as miners redirect power capacity to AI operations amid plunging revenues. Meanwhile, three mining pools now control approximately 60% of the network hashrate, and SBI Crypto has shut down its Japanese mining pool.
A security flaw in Coldcard's Mk3 hardware wallet, introduced in firmware version 4.0.0 in March 2021, enabled attackers to steal between $38-70 million worth of bitcoin from hundreds of wallets by exploiting predictable key generation. The vulnerability affected wallets that used the device to generate seed phrases, prompting urgent warnings for users to move funds to newly generated wallets.
A security flaw in Coldcard's Mk3 hardware wallet, introduced in firmware version 4.0.0 in March 2021, enabled attackers to steal between $38-70 million worth of bitcoin from hundreds of wallets by exploiting predictable key generation. The vulnerability affected wallets that used the device to generate seed phrases, prompting urgent warnings for users to move funds to newly generated wallets.
D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz warned that quantum computing will eventually be capable of breaking Bitcoin's proof-of-work protocol, while IBM separately announced achieving 'trusted quantum advantage' using 70 logical qubits. The developments highlight growing concerns about quantum threats to cryptocurrency security.
BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, Coinbase, Strategy, and other leading firms formed the Bitcoin Security Consortium, pledging $15 million over three years to fund Bitcoin security research, including post-quantum cryptography. The initiative follows Galaxy Digital's separate $5 million quantum readiness fund announced days earlier.
Blockchain security firm CertiK recorded 52 verified physical attacks on cryptocurrency holders in the first half of 2026, a 33.3% increase from 39 incidents a year earlier. Recorded financial exposure, including ransom demands and stolen funds, rose to $124.1 million from $10.5 million.
Galaxy Digital launched the Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative, committing up to $5 million in developer grants for post-quantum cryptography solutions and establishing an advisory council to prepare Bitcoin for potential quantum computing threats.
Project Eleven unveiled an unaudited post-quantum zero-knowledge proof prototype designed to verify Bitcoin wallet ownership after Q-Day. Separately, Galaxy launched a quantum-readiness initiative on July 21 that includes up to $5 million in developer grants and a Quantum Advisory Council. Project Eleven's announcement came around the 16th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto's July 2010 forum post discussing a possible cryptographic upgrade path.
Quantum security startup Project Eleven has funded a proof that allows wallet owners to reclaim Bitcoin after quantum computers can forge signatures, using the wallet's key-derivation path as ownership proof. The tool runs in 243 milliseconds on a laptop.
Coinbase's quantum advisory council released a report urging cryptocurrency developers to begin post-quantum migration work immediately, highlighting the vulnerability of abandoned Bitcoin addresses and warning that handling these dormant coins could become a major challenge for the network.
As Bitcoin's price has plummeted from $126,000 to around $60,000, erasing over $1.2 trillion in market value, Citi analysts and industry experts are raising alarms about quantum computing vulnerabilities, with Stellar unveiling a three-stage migration plan to quantum-safe cryptography while debate intensifies over whether Bitcoin or traditional banks face greater risk.
A court in Qingdao, China sentenced a man surnamed Zhang to 10 years and nine months in prison for stealing 107 Bitcoin from victim Feng after memorizing most of the 12-word wallet recovery phrase. The ruling establishes legal precedent by treating Bitcoin as property under Chinese law.
A Bitcoin wallet dormant since March 2011 transferred 15 BTC on June 2, 2026, months after receiving a legal notice via blockchain demanding proof of ownership in a $285 billion lawsuit. The wallet retained 20.55 BTC as change.
New reports warn the cryptocurrency industry faces an accelerating quantum computing threat that could compromise Bitcoin's security sooner than expected, with over $2 trillion in digital assets potentially at risk. Early Bitcoin investor Andrew Gault suggests the industry may be focusing on the wrong vulnerabilities.
Security experts warn that artificial intelligence is accelerating the quantum computing threat to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, while Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh cautions that a rushed post-quantum migration could cause worse failures than the threat itself. The concerns come as interest in vulnerable early Bitcoin holdings, including Satoshi Nakamoto's coins, intensifies.
NEAR Protocol plans to launch a post-quantum-safe signing testnet in Q2 2026 using FIPS-204 standard, allowing users to rotate keys to quantum-resistant alternatives. The announcement comes as Project Eleven warns quantum computing threatens blockchains, banking systems, and digital infrastructure, with concerns that Bitcoin may face challenges in quantum migration.
In a research note published May 3, 2026, Galaxy Digital Research Director Alex Thorn reported that the Bitcoin community is coalescing around a consensus to leave Satoshi Nakamoto's coins untouched while preparing for quantum computing threats through post-quantum cryptography adoption.
Venture fund Paradigm proposed a new design called PACTs that would allow long-term Bitcoin holders to privately timestamp proof of key control before quantum computers arrive, creating a potential rescue mechanism for vulnerable early Bitcoin holdings without moving funds onchain.
Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings announced the MARA Foundation to support Bitcoin network resilience, adoption, and address quantum computing risks. The foundation opened a $100,000 community grant vote for Bitcoin companies.
Independent researcher Giancarlo Lelli broke a 15-bit elliptic curve key on publicly accessible quantum hardware, winning Project Eleven's 1 BTC Q-Day Prize. The largest public demonstration yet of a quantum attack on Bitcoin-class cryptography, achieved on commodity cloud hardware rather than a national lab.
Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, disclosed that the U.S. military is actively running a Bitcoin node and testing the protocol's cryptographic architecture as a tool for network security and power projection, though not mining BTC.
The CEO of troubled Polish exchange Zonda revealed a Bitcoin wallet holding approximately 4,500 BTC (worth over $330 million) is inaccessible because private keys were never transferred during a company handover.
Bitcoin developers are weighing two approaches to quantum computing threats: BIP-361, which would freeze legacy coins over five years to force migration to quantum-resistant signatures, and BitMEX Research's 'Quantum Canary' bounty system that would only trigger a freeze after a proven attack occurs.
Within 48 hours of BIP-361, three competing approaches surface. Adam Back argues at Paris Blockchain Week for optional upgrades over forced freezes. BitMEX Research proposes a reactive "canary fund" that only triggers a freeze if a quantum attack is proven on-chain. Justin Sun announces TRON will be the first major chain to deploy NIST post-quantum signatures on mainnet, though no technical documentation follows.
Jameson Lopp and five co-authors publish BIP-361, a three-phase plan to phase out legacy signatures and freeze any unmigrated coins within five years, including an estimated 1.1 million BTC attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Crypto exchange Kraken disclosed two insider-related support access incidents and is being extorted by criminals who obtained videos of support staff accessing internal systems and limited client data. Kraken says no funds are at risk and will not negotiate.
American musician Garrett Dutton (G. Love) lost 5.9 Bitcoin ($420,000) after entering his seed phrase into a fraudulent Ledger app that appeared on Apple's App Store. The funds were quickly sent to KuCoin deposit addresses.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced it will include cryptocurrency firms in its cybersecurity threat intelligence sharing program, previously limited to traditional financial institutions. The move reflects increased frequency and sophistication of attacks targeting digital asset platforms.
Wall Street broker Bernstein published research arguing that while quantum computing poses a real threat to Bitcoin, it represents a multi-year upgrade cycle rather than an existential crisis, with risks concentrated in older wallets and exposed keys.
Lightning Labs CTO Olaoluwa Osuntokun published a working prototype on April 8, 2026, that lets Bitcoin wallet owners prove ownership via a zero-knowledge proof of their seed phrase, without revealing it, providing an escape hatch if an emergency quantum-defense upgrade ever locks users out of their funds. Running on a consumer MacBook, the tool generates a verifiable proof in 55 seconds with a 1.7 MB output, closing a gap that had existed only in theory: how to protect Bitcoin from a quantum threat without freezing ordinary users out.
The FBI's Internet Crime Report reveals Americans lost over $11 billion to cryptocurrency fraud schemes in 2025, with older Americans bearing nearly 40% of losses. Fraud schemes grew more sophisticated and targeted larger sums than in 2024.
Algorand jumped 50% after a Google Quantum AI research paper highlighted the blockchain as a live example of post-quantum cryptography implementation, while warning that quantum computers could threaten Bitcoin and Ethereum's current cryptographic security.
Google researchers published findings showing quantum computers may require 20x fewer qubits than previously estimated to break elliptic curve cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. The research suggests fault-tolerant quantum machines capable of threatening crypto security could arrive by 2029-2032, accelerating industry urgency around post-quantum upgrades.
A group of Bitcoin developers propose BIP-360, introducing a new quantum-resistant transaction type called pay-to-Merkle-root (P2MR). The proposal creates a migration path for new coins but leaves billions in legacy addresses unprotected.
CoinShares published research, pushing back on estimates that 20–50% of Bitcoin faces quantum risk, arguing only ~1.6 million BTC in legacy P2PK addresses, roughly 8% of supply, is realistically targetable. The firm said breaking Bitcoin's cryptography would require quantum computers 100,000 times more powerful than today's and narrowed the true market-disruption risk to just ~10,200 BTC concentrated enough to cause meaningful price impact.
