A coalition of cryptocurrency companies has called on frontier artificial intelligence (AI) laboratories to provide Bitcoin developers with early access to their most capable models.

In an open letter published Monday by the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), the signatories warned that many digital asset defenders — including Bitcoin Core developers — currently lack access to AI lab cybersecurity programs. They noted that guardrails built into publicly available frontier systems can block security researchers, forcing them to depend on less capable open-weight models.

The letter urged frontier AI labs to "establish or expand standing trusted-access programs for qualified defenders of open-source financial infrastructure."

Open-source software underpins critical digital and financial infrastructure, the letter emphasized, with Bitcoin (BTC) alone securing more than $1 trillion in value. A vulnerability in such infrastructure, the authors warned, could put individuals' life savings at risk. Bitcoin Core is maintained by a distributed network of contributors, many of whom work as volunteers or are funded through grants rather than institutional employers, leaving them with fewer resources than corporate security teams.

The open letter was co-signed by numerous crypto industry companies and organizations, among them the African Bitcoin Institute, Anchorage Digital, BitGo, Bitwise, Blockstream, Bull Bitcoin, MARA, Kraken, Ledger, and Trezor.

Open-Source Defenders Require Frontier AI Access

According to the letter, frontier AI is fundamentally altering the economics of security research and cyber operations. Advanced models can search large codebases, identify potential weaknesses, and accelerate complex technical work — benefiting both defenders and adversaries alike. Because Bitcoin's codebase is publicly auditable, both sides can probe it continuously, and the letter's authors argue that defenders need comparable AI firepower to maintain parity.

The signatories described frontier AI as potentially one of the "most powerful defensive technologies ever developed," cautioning:

"Without dedicated access programs, defenders may lack the tools needed to keep pace with evolving threats to the infrastructure they maintain."

The BPI reported receiving multiple independent accounts from open-source maintainers who described sophisticated actors — including potential foreign adversaries — leveraging advanced AI capabilities to sustain attacks.

Hacking activity across the crypto industry surged in April 2026, with malicious actors stealing over $634 million from cryptocurrency platforms, according to DefiLlama data. That figure represents the highest monthly total since the Bybit hack, which drove losses to approximately $1.4 billion in February 2025.

Advances in AI-assisted vulnerability discovery have heightened concerns throughout the crypto security sector. New models such as Claude Opus 4.8 and ChatGPT 5.5 have contributed to what Mitchell Amador, CEO of bug bounty platform Immunefi, described as a "vulnerability apocalypse" for the crypto industry.

Source: CryptoNewsNet