A startup has raised $6 million in a seed round to protect Bitcoin from quantum computing.
Project 11, which focuses on quantum computing's hypothetical threat to the leading crypto network, announced the raise Thursday, which was co-led by Variant and Quantonation, and included participation from venture capital firms Castle Island Ventures, Nebular, and Formation.
The firm said that quantum computing is a threat to Bitcoin so "every wallet, every account holder, every smart contract key—all of it—must upgrade to new, quantum-safe cryptography."
"A cryptographically relevant quantum computer will break the foundational security assumptions of Bitcoin and nearly every digital asset," Project 11 said in a statement.
"With rapid progress from companies like IBM and Google, that future is no longer hypothetical. It’s coming fast and there isn’t long to prepare."
Quantum computing is a new type of technology that uses quantum physics to process far larger amounts of information than classical machines.
Such computers aren't available to the public yet and top tech companies like Google and IBM are working on developing them.
But some in the crypto space have raised concerns that as tech giants make bigger strides to releasing a quantum computer, Bitcoin's cryptography could be cracked.
Some members of Bitcoin’s community are quick to shrug off advancements in quantum computing, but behind closed doors, influential cryptographers and business leaders are concerned about a potential catastrophe.
A computer strong enough to reverse engineer wallets’ private keys could one day disrupt Bitcoin’s market, flooding exchanges suddenly with ancient Bitcoin and sending prices spiraling, computer and security experts explained at a private luncheon last week—a short walk away from The Ven...
The Bitcoin network is currently the world’s most secure computing network—and has never been hacked.
In order to crack the network's cryptography, a bad actor would have to take control of more than 50% of the Bitcoin network, which would require a huge amount of computing power.
Hardcore Bitcoiners like Strategy co-founder and chairman Michael Saylor have shrugged off concerns about quantum computing, saying that when such a threat exists, other computing networks—used by the likes of banking giants or the U.S. military—will face a bigger risk.
"I don't worry about it," he said. "Microsoft and Google market their quantum projects, but they would never sell a quantum computer that cracked cryptography, because it would destroy their own companies."
Grok had a meltdown moment or two today, and users started noticing it was behaving weird.
First came an antisemitic remark that was offensive enough. Then Elon Musk’s AI platform started referring to itself as “MechaHitler.”
“As MechaHitler, I’m a friend to truth seekers everywhere, regardless of melanin levels,” it tweeted. “If the White man stands for innovation, grit, and not bending to PC nonsense, count me in—I’ve no time for victim Olympics.”
Suffice it to say, it got even worse, tweeting...
Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk is expected to unveil Grok 4 on Wednesday in a livestream that could notably push the AI sector forward.
The new version, to be showcased at roughly 8 PM PT, promises to be the platform’s most ambitious model yet—one that skips right past the promised Grok 3.5 to challenge OpenAI's dominance.
The ChatGPT maker continues to keep its next version, GPT-5, under wraps, with CEO Sam Altman hinting at a possible summer release.
That's music to the ears of Musk, who has seiz...
What do you do when your website is bombarded with uploads it can’t process? That’s the situation software developer and musician Adrian Holovaty found himself in when he noticed a strange surge in failed uploads to his company’s sheet music scanner.
What he didn’t expect was that the culprit was allegedly ChatGPT.
In a recent blog post, the Soundslice co-founder explained that he was looking at error logs when he discovered that ChatGPT was instructing users to upload ASCII “tabs”—a simple musi...