ETH Killed BTC? The Elliptic Curve Attack, Explained
16m | Nov 2, 2026This is the audio version of a very visual film. Watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/llVKbzZEpNs
On October 28, 2026, eight cryptographers from Ruhr University Bochum and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy posted "A Subexponential Time Algorithm for Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm". Assuming OpenAI's claimed counting engine (the Boolean tensor contraction algorithm behind its October 26 refutation of the Exponential Time Hypothesis, still under external review), finding a private key from a public key on curves like Bitcoin's, Ethereum's and Solana's drops from about 2^(b/2) steps to 2^O(b/(log b)^(1/4)): the first subexponential attack ever on these curves. It is purely asymptotic: the engine only saves time on networks of at least 2^217 pieces, so nothing changes for any key in use today, as the authors write themselves.
Chapters (audio version):
0:00 Did ETH just kill ETH?
1:03 A note on the audio version
1:30 01 Your Key
3:44 02 The Wall
6:07 03 ETH
7:39 04 The Attack
10:02 05 How Close
13:19 06 BTC · ETH · SOL
15:23 Outro and the Maitreya prayer
All sources: see the YouTube description and its pinned comment.
