Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute and a broad coalition of crypto companies have sent 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.

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

Defenders Are Left Without the Strongest Tools

In the letter, the authors emphasize that the need for such access has become evident over the past few weeks. People defending digital asset infrastructure and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities to conduct thorough security reviews. 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 over a trillion dollars, and across the entire digital asset ecosystem—from wallets, signing devices, cryptographic libraries, node software, custody systems, exchanges, and payment networks—trillions of dollars depend on it. This infrastructure is openly developed by companies, non-profits, 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 why digital assets attract cyberattacks.

Many cryptocurrencies are designed as bearer instruments, 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 is meanwhile changing the economics for both security researchers and attackers.

Defenders Are in 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 reviews on less powerful open-weight models. According to the letter's authors, developers occupy the most vulnerable position in the entire AI security ecosystem.

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 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 working around the clock to review 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 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" compute power and the ability for autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without which meaningful security reviews cannot be conducted.

Separately, the coalition asks 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 disclosure, 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 takeaway: this move is not just lobbying, but a signal of an emerging imbalance of power in cyberspace. If AI labs do not open access to defenders, we risk a world where attackers are armed to the teeth while infrastructure guardians are left with only old shields. The question of access to frontier models is becoming a question of national and financial security.