Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute and dozens of leading crypto industry companies have issued a consolidated demand to the world's largest AI labs. The essence of the appeal is to provide verified open-source developers with reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure. This is not just a request, but a signal of a critical imbalance in the arms race of the digital age.

The letter has been signed by representatives of dozens of organizations from the digital asset, cybersecurity, and open-source development sectors. Among them are Coinbase, Block, Blockstream, BitGo, Anchorage Digital, Bitwise, Trezor, MARA, Foundry, Galaxy, Strategy, Strike, and River. All of them depend on the integrity of the open infrastructure and libraries that have become the foundation for storing and moving capital.

Infrastructure defenders remain without the strongest tools

In the open letter, the authors emphasize that the need for such access has become evident over the past few weeks. Specialists protecting digital asset infrastructure and open-source software urgently need new AI capabilities for thorough security auditing. Without this, it is difficult for them to counter increasingly sophisticated attacks from malicious actors.

Open source has long become financial infrastructure. By my estimates, the Bitcoin network alone safeguards more than three trillion dollars. And across the entire ecosystem—from wallets, signing devices, and cryptographic libraries to node software, custodial systems, exchanges, and payment networks—we are talking about 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 take away a lifetime of savings. Digital assets attract cyberattacks precisely for this reason.

Many cryptocurrencies are structured 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 emphasize. Cutting-edge AI is 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 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 audits 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 small teams find it difficult 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 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, 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 resources and the ability for autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without this, meaningful security audits 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 point is a direct channel through which vulnerabilities can be reported in a coordinated manner, remediated, and contact made 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 comment: This appeal is not just lobbying, but an attempt to level the playing field in cyber warfare. While labs hand out privileged access to a narrow circle of corporate partners, defenders of decentralized networks are left with outdated tools. If AI labs ignore this call, we risk seeing a wave of hacks that will undermine trust in digital assets. Open access to powerful models is not a matter of convenience, but of infrastructure survival.