Here’s what happened in crypto today

Today in crypto, concerns over security and regulation dominated the agenda as a blockchain founder warned the first quantum-powered crypto attack may be indistinguishable from an ordinary wallet breach, BTCPay Server tightened Lightning access after a critical exploit, and the US Senate revived the CLARITY Act by scheduling a key procedural vote for September.

Crypto’s first quantum attack will look like unexplained breach: Quantus founder

The first sign that quantum computing has broken modern cryptography probably won’t be a splashy theft of Satoshi Nakamoto’s dormant Bitcoin. It could just be a wave of unrelated crypto wallet breaches with no trace of how an attacker did it, according to the founder of blockchain startup Quantus. 

“When someone cracks your key, you don’t get a memo saying how they did it,” Christopher Smith, CEO and co-founder of Quantus Network, told Cointelegraph. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from public keys exposed onchain, allowing an attacker to move funds without compromising a wallet, device or exchange’s internal systems. 

This makes the arrival of “Q-day” — a hypothetical future moment when quantum computers become powerful enough to break standard public-key cryptography — unusually difficult to detect. In a theft involving a highly secure organization, “the only forensic evidence would be that there was no breach,” Smith said.

Smith’s warning comes as advances in quantum algorithms have reduced estimates of computing resources needed to attack the elliptic-curve cryptography used by major blockchains. 

BTCPay restricts remote Lightning access after attackers steal funds

BTCPay Server has temporarily restricted public remote connections to Lightning Network nodes running Lightning Network Daemon (LND) software after attackers exploited a critical vulnerability to obtain credentials and move funds. 

BTCPay said the restriction prevents external wallets such as Zeus from connecting through a BTCPay Server domain or Tor onion address on Docker deployments. BTCPay said Lightning payments can continue and that it plans to restore the remote-access option when it considers it safe. 

Version 2.4.2 installs LND version 0.21.1 and automatically regenerates the macaroon credentials on standard BTCPay installations. The project advised operators to check for unauthorized payments, unexpected channel closures, unfamiliar peers and discrepancies in their onchain or Lightning balances.

The BTCPay breach is the latest security incident involving widely used Bitcoin products, following a Coldcard hardware-wallet flaw linked to more than $100 million in confirmed losses. The separate incidents affected software surrounding Bitcoin rather than the network’s underlying protocol.

US Senate sets up September procedural vote on CLARITY Act

US Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on a motion to take up the CLARITY Act, setting up a key procedural vote on the crypto market structure bill after lawmakers return in September.

The Senate is expected to vote after reconvening next month. Invoking cloture requires 60 votes, meaning Republicans will need Democratic support to clear the procedural hurdle and bring the legislation closer to Senate consideration. The vote is not on passage of the CLARITY Act and does not guarantee the bill will ultimately receive a final vote.

The move revives momentum for one of the most consequential pieces of US crypto legislation after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement before the August recess. The CLARITY Act would establish a federal market structure for digital assets and clarify oversight responsibilities between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Negotiations have stalled over proposed ethics provisions and rules governing stablecoin rewards. Lawmakers have reportedly been working on a bipartisan ethics addendum aimed at addressing Democratic concerns over President Donald Trump’s crypto-related financial interests, including a proposal requiring the president to divest from certain crypto-related businesses.