Vitalik Buterin now confident AI won’t break crypto, betting 90% of his net worth

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has pushed back against predictions that artificial intelligence could trigger a 50% Bitcoin crash within two years.

The debate began after Silicon Valley investor and AI-risk commentator Liron Shapiro said he sees a 50% probability that Bitcoin will fall more than 50% over the next two years because AI undermines what investors believe are the network’s security and robustness guarantees.

However, Buterin took the other side of this position, saying:

Buterin argued that Bitcoin should be able to handle security failures that do not require social consensus, including attacks affecting clients, mining pools and other network infrastructure. He also placed a very low probability on AI producing a fundamental break in Bitcoin’s hashing functions or proof-of-work system.

He said he would normally offer Shapiro a wager on the outcome, but his existing crypto holdings already amount to effectively making that bet with roughly 90% of his net worth. Buterin also suggested the same argument should apply to Ethereum.

The disagreement captures a growing divide over what increasingly capable AI systems mean for crypto security.

Shapiro’s argument does not require AI to break Bitcoin’s underlying cryptography. A wave of attacks that exposes weaknesses investors previously assumed were difficult or impossible to exploit could be enough to damage confidence, even if developers eventually repair the vulnerabilities.