Vitalik Buterin Rejects AI Warning That Bitcoin Could Crash 50%

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has rejected a prediction from Silicon Valley investor Liron Shapira that artificial intelligence (AI) could trigger a 50% or bigger Bitcoin crash within two years by weakening the network’s security.

Buterin says the risk is extremely low and revealed that around 90% of his net worth is already riding on this bet.

Liron Shapira Sees 50% Bitcoin Crash Risk

Liron Shapira said he had 50% confidence that Bitcoin would lose more than half its value within two years because AI could weaken the security guarantees investors expect from the network.

“I claim (50% confidence) that BTC prices will crash 50%+ in the next 2 years because of AI undermining what people imagined were its security or robustness guarantees.”

His concern is that faster AI could eventually create new attacks against the technology protecting Bitcoin.

Vitalik Says Bitcoin Can Handle Most Problems

In response to Shapira’s claim, Vitalik says he remains confident in Bitcoin’s ability to address security problems.

“I take the opposite side of that.”

He explained that Bitcoin can address many network-level problems without requiring broad social agreement. For example, developers and mining pools could upgrade their systems if new attacks appeared.