Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, together with dozens of companies from the digital assets sector, has issued an open appeal to the world's leading AI labs. The core demand is to provide vetted open-source developers with reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure. This concerns a critical gap in the cybersecurity system that is becoming increasingly apparent.

Infrastructure Defenders Are Left Without the Strongest Tools

The appeal emphasizes that the need for such access has become especially acute over the past few weeks. Specialists ensuring the security of digital assets and open-source software are facing a shortage of the latest AI capabilities to thoroughly check for vulnerabilities. Without this, it is difficult for them to counter increasingly 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—this amounts to 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 structured so that the path from a hack to losing money is short. Under such conditions, it is especially important to find and close vulnerabilities in advance, the appeal's authors emphasize. Cutting-edge AI, meanwhile, changes 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. However, the authors expect these capabilities to spread rapidly through public open-source models, unauthorized access to corporate systems, and specialized tools for cyberattacks.

At the same time, access paths 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 system 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 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 checking 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, 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 capacity and the ability for autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without this, meaningful security testing 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 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 not just a request for access, but a signal of a systemic imbalance of power in cyber warfare. If AI labs do not open their doors to defenders, we risk a world where attackers are armed to the teeth while defense remains at the level of "makeshift tools." The coalition is right: the security of digital assets is a matter not only of technology, but also of the fair distribution of capabilities.