Crypto news

The Bitcoin Policy Institute and dozens of leading crypto industry companies have joined forces in an unprecedented initiative: they are demanding that the world's largest AI labs provide verified open-source developers with access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models. The goal is to protect financial infrastructure that today underpins trillions of dollars.

The coalition, which includes developers, major custodians, payment services, and security firms, has published an open letter. Their businesses depend directly on the integrity of open infrastructure and libraries, and they see this issue as a critical gap in the defenders' arsenal.

Defenders Are Left Without the Strongest Tools

The appeal emphasizes that the need for such access has become evident over the past few weeks. Specialists ensuring the security of digital assets and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities to thoroughly audit code for vulnerabilities. Without this, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to counter sophisticated attacks by malicious actors.

Open-source code has long become financial infrastructure. According to the authors' estimates, the Bitcoin network alone safeguards more than a trillion dollars, while the entire digital asset ecosystem—from wallets and cryptographic libraries to node software, custodial systems, exchanges, and payment networks—manages sums 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, so a single vulnerability can wipe out a lifetime of savings. This is precisely why digital assets attract cyberattacks.

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 cyberattack tools.

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 maintainers' scarce 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 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, pre-release versions. Among the conditions, the authors also cite "sufficient" compute capacity and autonomous agents working on long-running tasks—without which meaningful security reviews 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 equal footing 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 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 asset, cybersecurity, and open-source sectors.

My comment: This move is not just a request—it is a marker of the industry's maturity. We are seeing the crypto sector realize that AI is not only a threat but also a key defensive tool. The question is whether the labs will heed this call: if not, the asymmetry between attackers and defenders will only grow, and the price of delay will be measured not in reputation but in real user losses.