Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute and dozens of leading crypto industry players have joined forces in an unprecedented initiative, sending an open letter to the world's largest AI labs. The demand is simple and categorical: provide vetted open-source developers with reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure. This is not just a request—it is a cry for help from an industry managing trillions of dollars.

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

Infrastructure 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 who daily protect digital asset infrastructure and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities for thorough security auditing. Without this, they struggle 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 and signing devices to cryptographic libraries, node software, custody systems, exchanges, and payment networks—trillions of dollars are at stake. 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 retirement 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 as bearer assets, so the path from a hack to lost funds is short. Under such conditions, it is especially important to find and patch vulnerabilities in advance, the letter's authors emphasize. 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 cyberattack tools.

Today, leading labs and select partners see new cyber capabilities months before they reach the rest of the ecosystem. Meanwhile, access pathways to such tools for qualified defenders remain limited and inconsistent. Many digital asset developers, including Bitcoin Core maintainers, lack access to 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 AI security ecosystem.

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 auditing wallets, libraries, protocols, and open tools using available open-weight models, the authors add.

What the coalition is asking from 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 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 power and autonomous agents working on long-running tasks—without which meaningful security audits 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 reporting, 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 analysis: This initiative is not just a bureaucratic gesture but a marker of industry maturity. The crypto industry has realized that AI is a double-edged sword, and without equal access to frontier models, defenders are doomed to a catch-up role. The question now is whether labs will heed this call, as their response will determine not only Bitcoin's security but also trust in the entire digital economy.