Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, together with a broad coalition of companies from the crypto industry, has published an open letter to the world's leading AI labs. The authors demand that verified open-source developers be given reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models — without this, in their view, protecting financial infrastructure becomes impossible.

The letter has been signed by dozens of organizations from the digital assets, cybersecurity, and open-source development sectors. These include major custodians, payment services, security firms, and independent researchers whose businesses directly depend on the integrity of open infrastructure and libraries.

Defenders are left without the strongest tools

The letter emphasizes that the need for such access has become evident over the past few weeks. People who protect digital asset infrastructure and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities to conduct thorough security checks. 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, while 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 miners living on grants.

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 take away 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 losing money is short. Under such conditions, it is especially important to find and close vulnerabilities in advance, the authors of the letter 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 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 denied access to 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 ecosystem around 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 small teams find it difficult 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 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 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, to pre-release versions. Among the conditions, the authors also cite "sufficient" computing power and autonomous agents working on long-running tasks — without this, meaningful security checks 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 governments. The final item on the list is a direct channel through which vulnerabilities can be reported in a coordinated manner, remediated, and contact established 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 assets, cybersecurity, and open-source sectors.

My expert take: this move is not just a request but a signal of a systemic imbalance. While AI labs provide access to select corporations and governments, it is the open infrastructure on which trillions rest that remains the most vulnerable. If the labs do not respond, we risk a world where cybercriminals are better armed than those who protect our money.