Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, along with dozens of companies in the digital assets sector, has issued an open letter to the world's leading AI labs. The core demand is to provide trusted open-source developers with reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure.

The letter has been signed by representatives of dozens of organizations working in digital assets, cybersecurity, and open source. Among them are major custodians, payment services, and security firms whose business directly depends on the integrity of open infrastructure and libraries.

Infrastructure defenders are left without the strongest tools

In the letter, the authors emphasize that the need for such access has become apparent over the past few weeks. People who protect digital asset infrastructure and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities for thorough security auditing. Without this, it is difficult for them to counter increasingly sophisticated attackers.

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 asset ecosystem—from wallets, signing devices, cryptographic libraries, node software, custodial systems, exchanges, and payment networks—trillions of dollars depend on it. 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. In such conditions, it is especially important to find and patch vulnerabilities in advance, the letter's 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 weaknesses, 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 cyberattack tools.

Today, leading labs and select partners see new cyber capabilities months before they reach the rest of the ecosystem. Meanwhile, access paths to such tools for qualified defenders remain limited and inconsistent. Many digital asset developers, including Bitcoin Core maintainers, are denied access to lab programs.

Restrictions on public frontier systems often block legitimate security work. As a result, defenders are forced to conduct critical audits on less powerful open-weight models. According to the letter's authors, developers occupy the most vulnerable position in the entire security ecosystem around AI.

"The Bitcoin Policy Institute has received several independent reports from open-source maintainers. According to them, sophisticated 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 secure, responding to persistent and sophisticated activity diverts maintainers' scarce resources away from development and routine security work. Bitcoin developers and other security researchers are around the clock auditing wallets, libraries, protocols, and open 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 and 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 audits cannot be conducted.

Separately, the coalition is asking for 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 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 assets, cybersecurity, and open-source sectors.

My take: This letter is not just a request for access, but a signal that the asymmetry between attackers and defenders in the crypto industry has reached a critical point. If the labs do not respond, we risk seeing a wave of incidents where attackers stay one step ahead and trust in digital assets is undermined. The question is not whether access is needed, but how quickly it will be granted.