Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute and dozens of leading digital industry companies have joined forces in an unprecedented initiative, demanding that the world's largest AI labs provide trusted open-source developers with reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models.

The coalition, which includes giants from the crypto industry, cybersecurity, and the open-source community, has sent an open letter to the labs developing the most powerful AI systems. The letter emphasizes that defenders of digital infrastructure and open-source software urgently need the latest AI capabilities to conduct thorough security testing. Without this, they cannot effectively counter increasingly sophisticated attacks from malicious actors.

Infrastructure defenders are left without the strongest tools

Open source has long become the financial infrastructure. By my estimates, the Bitcoin network alone safeguards assets worth over a trillion dollars, while the entire digital asset ecosystem—from wallets and cryptographic libraries to custodial systems, exchanges, and payment networks—manages trillions of dollars. This infrastructure is openly developed by companies, non-profit organizations, independent researchers, and grant-funded maintainers.

Behind this software stand the personal funds of millions of people. These are retirement 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. In such conditions, it is especially important to find and close vulnerabilities in advance. Cutting-edge AI is now changing the economics for both security researchers and attackers.

Defenders occupy the least privileged position

Advanced models are capable of scanning large codebases, identifying potential weaknesses, and accelerating complex technical work—for both defenders and attackers alike. I 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 testing on less powerful open-weight models. Based on my data, developers occupy the most vulnerable position in the entire security ecosystem surrounding AI.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute has received several independent reports from open-source maintainers. According to them, experienced attackers, possibly from other countries, are conducting continuous AI-assisted attacks, and it is difficult for small teams to sustain 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 reviewing wallets, libraries, protocols, and open-source tools 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 write 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 for autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without which meaningful security testing 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 governments. The final item on the list is a direct channel for coordinated vulnerability reporting, remediation, and contact with lab security teams.

The digital asset industry is ready to help identify trusted participants, establish standards, and coordinate remediation when issues are discovered. 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 analysis: this is a landmark moment. The crypto industry, historically reliant on open source and decentralization, has realized that security without access to the most powerful AI tools is becoming uncompetitive. If the labs do not open their doors, we risk seeing a future where only select corporations and governments can protect digital assets—which contradicts the very principles of an open financial system.