The crypto industry is demanding that AI labs open access to their flagship models — trillions of dollars are at stake.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute, together with a broad coalition of companies in the digital assets sector, has published an open letter to the world's largest AI labs. The core demand is to provide verified open-source developers with reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure. This is not merely a request, but a systemic call to reconsider current access policies.
Infrastructure defenders are left without the strongest tools
The letter emphasizes that the need for such access has become evident over the past few weeks. Specialists ensuring the security of digital assets and open-source software urgently need the latest AI capabilities for thorough auditing. Without this, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to counter sophisticated attacks by malicious actors.
Open source has long become financial infrastructure. According to the authors' estimates, the Bitcoin network alone safeguards more than a trillion dollars, and across the entire digital assets ecosystem—from wallets and cryptographic libraries to node software, custodial systems, exchanges, and payment networks—the figure runs into trillions of dollars. This infrastructure is openly developed by companies, non-profit organizations, independent researchers, and grant-funded maintainers.
Behind this software are the personal funds of millions of people. These are pension savings, business capital, reserve funds, and family wealth, so a single vulnerability can wipe out a lifetime of savings. Digital assets attract cyberattacks precisely for this reason.
Many cryptocurrencies are designed in such a way that the path from a hack to lost funds is short. Under these conditions, it is especially important to find and close vulnerabilities in advance, the authors emphasize. Cutting-edge AI is meanwhile changing the economics for both security researchers and attackers.
Defenders occupy the least privileged position
Advanced models are capable of reviewing large codebases, identifying potential weak points, and accelerating complex technical work—for both defenders and attackers alike. The authors expect these capabilities to continue spreading through public open-source models, unauthorized access to corporate systems, and specialized tools for cyberattacks.
Today, leading labs and select partners see new cyber capabilities months before they reach the rest of the ecosystem. At the same time, access pathways to such tools for qualified defenders remain limited and inconsistent. Many digital asset developers, including Bitcoin Core maintainers, are excluded from lab programs.
Restrictions on public frontier systems often block legitimate security work. As a result, defenders are forced to conduct critical checks on less powerful open-weight models. According to the letter's authors, developers occupy the most vulnerable position in the entire security framework surrounding AI.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute received several independent reports from open-source maintainers. According to them, experienced attackers, possibly from other countries, are conducting continuous AI-assisted attacks, and small teams struggle to keep up with such a pace.
Even when systems remain protected, responding to persistent and sophisticated activity diverts scarce maintainer resources away from development and routine security work. Bitcoin developers and other security researchers are checking wallets, libraries, protocols, and open-source tools around the clock using available open-weight models, the authors add.
What the coalition is asking of the labs
Early access and reasonable compute budgets would help key developers create more secure code, as well as find and fix vulnerabilities before losses occur. The coalition is asking frontier AI labs to create or expand standing trusted access programs for qualified defenders of open financial infrastructure.
Such programs should provide early, controlled access to the strongest cyber models and, where appropriate, pre-release versions. Among the conditions, the authors also cite "sufficient" compute resources and the ability of autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without which meaningful security reviews cannot be conducted.
Separately, the coalition requests secure environments for analyzing private or closed-source code, as well as participation rights for small, non-profit, and independent maintainers on par with large companies and states. The final item on the list is a direct channel for coordinated vulnerability reporting, remediation, and communication with lab security teams.
The digital assets industry is ready to help identify trusted participants, establish standards, and coordinate remediation when issues are found. Frontier AI, in the authors' view, could become one of the most powerful defensive technologies in history—but only with fair access to such systems.
The letter was signed by representatives of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Coinbase, Block, Blockstream, BitGo, Anchorage Digital, Bitwise, Trezor, MARA, Foundry, Galaxy, Strategy, Strike, and River, as well as dozens of other participants from the digital assets, cybersecurity, and open-source sectors.
My take: this move is a logical continuation of the fight for infrastructure sovereignty. While AI labs hand out access selectively, the security of critical financial systems remains hostage to corporate policies. The coalition demonstrates market maturity, but success will depend on whether the labs hear this signal before the first major AI-assisted attack causes irreparable damage.