Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, together with dozens of leading crypto market players, has published an open letter to the world's largest AI labs. The main demand is to provide verified open-source developers with reliable access to advanced artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure.

This step is not just a request, but a systemic problem that has been brewing for months. Dozens of organizations from the digital asset, cybersecurity, and open-source development sectors have signed the letter. 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 open infrastructure, which today remains without the most powerful protection tool.

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 daily protect digital asset infrastructure and open source code urgently need the latest AI capabilities for thorough security testing. Without this, it is increasingly difficult for them to counter ever more 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 and cryptographic libraries to node software, custody systems, exchanges, and payment networks—the figure is in the 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 retirement savings, business capital, reserve funds, and family wealth. A single vulnerability can wipe out a lifetime of savings. Digital assets attract cyberattacks precisely for this reason. In such conditions, it is especially important to find and close vulnerabilities in advance, the authors emphasize. Advanced AI is meanwhile changing the economics for both security researchers and attackers.

Defenders are in 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 denied access to lab programs. Restrictions on public frontier systems often block legitimate security work. As a result, defenders are forced to conduct critical testing on less powerful open-weight models. According to the letter's authors, developers occupy the most vulnerable position in the entire security framework surrounding 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 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 create more secure code, as well as 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, pre-release versions. Among the conditions, the authors also cite "sufficient" computing power and the ability of autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without this, meaningful security testing is 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 states. 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. Advanced AI, in the authors' view, could become one of the most powerful defensive technologies in history, but only with fair access to such systems.

My take: this letter is an important signal that the cybersecurity arms race is already in full swing, and without equal access to AI, defenders are doomed to play catch-up. If the labs do not respond constructively, we risk a world where vulnerabilities in financial infrastructure are found only by attackers.