Bitcoin firms ask AI labs for same tools attackers already have

More than three dozen bitcoin and crypto companies have asked the largest AI labs to give open-source security researchers early access to their most capable models, arguing that the people defending a trillion dollars of infrastructure are working with weaker tools than those attacking it.

The letter, organised by the Bitcoin Policy Institute and published earlier this week, is signed by Coinbase, Block, BitGo, Blockstream, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Bitwise, Foundry, Casa, Exodus and others, alongside nonprofit developer funds including Brink, Chaincode and Btrust.

Its central complaint is that Bitcoin Core developers, the small group maintaining the software that runs the network, cannot access the programs’ labs run for trusted security partners.

When they turn to publicly available models instead, the safety filters designed to stop people from writing malware also block efforts to find flaws before criminals do.

That leaves them on open-weight models, which can be freely downloaded and are generally less capable.

Attackers face none of those constraints. The letter said the labs and a handful of partners can see new offensive capabilities months before anyone else. In contrast, those capabilities spread anyway through public models, stolen access to corporate systems and purpose-built hacking tools.