Bitcoin Developers AI Access Urgently Needed for Crypto Security

Who should get first crack at the world’s most powerful AI models — the hackers probing Bitcoin’s code for weaknesses, or the volunteers trying to patch it before they strike? That question sits at the center of a new open letter from the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) and more than 40 digital-asset organizations, which is pushing for faster Bitcoin developers AI access to frontier artificial intelligence systems as AI-assisted attacks on crypto infrastructure keep escalating.

Key takeaways

• The Bitcoin Policy Institute and over 40 crypto organizations, including Block, Coinbase, Strategy, MARA, Galaxy, BitGo, Brink and Trezor, signed an open letter asking AI labs to grant trusted access to frontier models.
• Bitcoin Core developers and other open-source maintainers say public guardrails on advanced AI systems currently block legitimate security research.
• Bitcoin secures more than $1 trillion in value, which the coalition says raises the stakes of any unpatched vulnerability.
• Hackers stole over $634 million from crypto platforms in April 2026, the worst monthly total since the Bybit hack, according to DefiLlama data cited in the letter.
• Immunefi’s CEO says newer AI models, including Claude Opus 4.8 and ChatGPT 5.5, have fueled a “vulnerability apocalypse” across the industry.