Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute and a broad coalition of digital asset companies have published an open letter to the world's leading AI labs. The authors demand that vetted open-source developers be given reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure.

This is not just another initiative—it is a signal of a growing imbalance of power in cyberspace. Dozens of organizations have signed the letter, including developers, major custodians, payment services, and security firms. Their businesses depend directly on the integrity of the open infrastructure and libraries on which the entire ecosystem is built.

Infrastructure defenders are left without the strongest tools

In the letter, the authors emphasize that the need for such access has become obvious over the past few weeks. People who protect digital asset infrastructure and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities to conduct thorough security reviews. Without them, it is difficult to stay ahead of 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 are at stake. 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 retirement 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. In such conditions, it is especially important to find and patch vulnerabilities in advance, the letter's authors stress. Cutting-edge AI is meanwhile 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 tools for cyberattacks.

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 landscape.

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 reviewing 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, to pre-release versions. Among the conditions, the authors also cite "sufficient" compute resources and the ability to run autonomous agents on long-horizon tasks—without these, meaningful security reviews are impossible.

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 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 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 analysis: This move is a logical response to the asymmetry in the AI arms race. While labs sell access to their models to corporations and governments, it is independent maintainers who remain the first line of defense for millions of users. If AI labs do not respond to this call, we risk a situation where the most powerful cyber defense tools are available only to those with budgets, not to those who actually carry the infrastructure on their shoulders.