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The Bitcoin Policy Institute, together with dozens of leading crypto industry companies, has issued an open appeal to the largest artificial intelligence laboratories. The core demand is to provide trusted open-source developers with reliable access to advanced AI models to protect financial infrastructure.

The appeal has been signed by representatives of dozens of organizations from the digital assets, cybersecurity, and open-source development sectors. Among them are major custodians, payment services, and security firms whose business directly depends on the integrity of open infrastructure and libraries.

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 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 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 so that the path from a hack to the loss of funds is short. In such conditions, it is especially important to find and close vulnerabilities in advance, the authors of the appeal emphasize. Advanced 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 cyberattack tools.

Today, leading laboratories 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 laboratory 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 framework surrounding AI.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute received several independent reports from open-source maintainers. According to them, sophisticated 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 checking wallets, libraries, protocols, and open tools around the clock using available open-weight models, the authors add.

What the Coalition Asks of the Laboratories

Early access and reasonable compute budgets would help key developers create more secure code and find and fix vulnerabilities before losses occur. The coalition asks frontier AI laboratories 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 the ability of autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks—without this, meaningful security reviews cannot be conducted.

Separately, the coalition requests secure environments for analyzing private or closed code, as well as the right for small, non-profit, and independent maintainers to participate on equal footing with large companies and states. The final item on the list is a direct channel for coordinated vulnerability reporting, remediation, and communication with laboratory security teams.

The digital asset industry is ready to help identify trusted participants, establish standards, and coordinate remediation when issues are discovered. 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.

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 view: this step is timely and strategically important. While major laboratories compete for AI supremacy, defenders of critical infrastructure remain in the shadows. If access is not opened up, the asymmetry between attackers and defenders will become catastrophic. I believe this appeal could serve as a starting point for new standards of cooperation between AI giants and the crypto industry.