Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, together with a broad coalition of digital asset companies, has published an open letter to the world's largest AI labs. The authors demand that verified open-source developers be granted reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure.

Dozens of organizations from the digital asset, cybersecurity, and open-source sectors have signed this document. Among them are developers, major custodians, payment services, and security firms whose businesses directly depend on the integrity of open infrastructure and libraries.

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. People who protect digital asset infrastructure and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities to conduct thorough security checks. Without this, it is difficult for them to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated attackers.

Open source has long become financial infrastructure. According to the authors' estimates, the Bitcoin network alone safeguards over a trillion dollars, and across the entire digital asset ecosystem, trillions of dollars depend on wallets, signing devices, cryptographic libraries, node software, custodial systems, exchanges, and payment networks. 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. This is precisely why digital assets attract cyberattacks.

Many cryptocurrencies are structured as bearer assets, so the path from a hack to lost funds is short. Under such conditions, it is especially important to find and close vulnerabilities in advance, the letter's authors emphasize. Cutting-edge AI, meanwhile, is changing the economics for both security researchers and attackers.

Defenders occupy the least privileged position

Advanced models can review large codebases, identify potential weaknesses, and accelerate 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 cyberattack tools.

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 around the clock checking wallets, libraries, protocols, and open tools using available open-weight models, the authors add.

What the coalition is asking from labs

Early access and reasonable compute budgets would help key developers write more secure code and find and fix vulnerabilities before losses occur. The coalition is asking frontier AI labs to create or expand permanent 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" computing power and the ability of autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without this, meaningful security reviews cannot be conducted.

Separately, the coalition asks for secure environments for analyzing private or closed-source code, as well as the right for small, non-profit, and independent maintainers to participate on equal footing with large companies and governments. The final item on the list is a direct channel for coordinated vulnerability reporting, remediation, and communication with lab security teams.

The digital asset 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 asset, cybersecurity, and open-source sectors.

My take: This is a landmark moment. AI labs, competing for dominance, risk overlooking the critical task of securing decentralized systems that already hold trillions of dollars. If access to the most powerful models remains a privilege of select corporations and states, we risk a world where attackers are always one step ahead. Open and fair access is not a courtesy but a necessity for the survival of the entire ecosystem.