Vitalik Buterin believes that the real risk is not AI breaching cryptocurrency, but rather the technical transition period of cryptocurrency transformation.

Written by: Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly refuted a prediction that artificial intelligence will trigger a more than 50% drop in Bitcoin's price within two years.

The debate originated from the judgment of Silicon Valley investor and AI risk commentator Liron Shapiro. He believes that in the next two years, there is a 50% chance that Bitcoin will see a decline of more than 50%, arguing that AI will undermine investor trust in the security and robustness of the Bitcoin network.

However, Vitalik holds the opposite view, stating in a post on the X platform: "My core logic is that I remain optimistic about network security in the long term; the real challenge lies in how to achieve transformation."

Vitalik suggested that security issues that do not require a social consensus across the entire network for repair can be fully managed by the Bitcoin ecosystem, including attacks aimed at clients, mining pools, and other network infrastructures. He believes that AI is almost unlikely to breach the Bitcoin hash function and proof-of-work mechanism from the ground up.

He expressed a willingness to bet against Shapiro on this viewpoint, and that he has essentially put up about 90% of his assets in existing crypto assets. He also believes that this logic applies to Ethereum as well.

This disagreement reflects a significant divergence in the market: how the ever-evolving AI systems will change the cryptocurrency market.

Shapiro's argument does not necessitate AI cracking the underlying cryptographic algorithms of Bitcoin. Even if developers eventually patch the vulnerabilities, a wave of large-scale attacks that expose security flaws previously thought to be difficult to exploit by investors could be enough to undermine market confidence.

The AI attacks have already begun to test the cryptocurrency defense system

The real cases within the crypto industry confirm that the threats warned about by Shapiro have arrived, as hackers can generate risks without breaching Bitcoin's underlying cryptography.

In August this year, Boltz indefinitely suspended its operations after months of automated AI scan attacks. Multiple controlled security attacks occurred in succession, and small development teams could not keep up with the pace of attack iterations to fix vulnerabilities.

Boltz stated that its non-custodial structure ensured the safety of user funds, but the business bore the losses caused by the attacks, ultimately determining that it could not operate safely in the long term.

This incident underscores that AI can exert pressure on the foundational infrastructure surrounding Bitcoin without destroying the proof-of-work mechanism or breaching the underlying cryptographic system. Attackers rely on automated tools to exploit vulnerabilities on a massive scale, far exceeding the efficiency of defenders in identifying, fixing, and deploying patches.

Senior executives in the security industry expect that as offensive AI capabilities continue to upgrade, such threats will proliferate widely.

Deddy David, CEO of blockchain security company Cyvers, previously told CryptoSlate that economic losses caused by AI-induced smart contract attacks could ultimately reach hundreds of millions or even tens of billions of dollars.

"If AI can significantly exploit vulnerabilities in the core infrastructure of the internet, the cryptocurrency market will be among the first to bear the brunt," David stated.

Wallets, cross-chain bridges, exchanges, smart contracts, and the software supporting blockchain network operations all face risks. Compared to Bitcoin's consensus mechanism itself, these systems leave hackers with numerous vulnerabilities to exploit.

This is also the key point of disagreement between Vitalik and Shapiro: AI does not need to crack the SHA‑256 hash algorithm to pose serious harm to the entire Bitcoin economic ecosystem.

The unresolved core question is whether these attacks can be controlled as Vitalik anticipates through iterative upgrades and stronger defensive measures, or whether they will ultimately seriously undermine the safety assumptions on which investors rely when pricing Bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency and tech giants race to develop AI defense capabilities

The entire tech industry is igniting an arms race to ensure that the iteration speed of defensive AI does not lag behind that of offensive AI.

Anthropic has restricted its model’s public access due to its ability to autonomously seek out software vulnerabilities and convert them into attack weapons. Companies have turned to the Glasswing program to provide this technological capability to defense parties, with participation from tech and financial institutions such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase.

The project leverages Mythos Preview to identify and fix critical system vulnerabilities before malicious attackers utilize similar AI tools to launch attacks. Anthropic has committed to providing up to $100 million in computing power to support this plan.

Participants in the defense layout are no longer limited to single enterprises. More than 100 organizations, including Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI, have jointly signed an open letter warning governments and businesses: In just a few months, AI-based cyberattacks will become more prevalent and their means more complex.

Capital One, Mastercard, Visa, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, and other banks, payment giants, and tech companies have also joined the joint call. They believe that as AI capabilities improve, existing cybersecurity protection systems will no longer suffice, and already scarce key infrastructure faces greater risks. They urge governments and tech companies to provide advanced defensive AI tools and security testing services to institutions such as hospitals and water facilities.

The cryptocurrency industry is also caught up in this race and faces additional challenges: a large number of systems host financial assets that can be transferred instantaneously, and the entire infrastructure operates transparently and continuously throughout the year.

Therefore, we cannot simply use "Can AI destroy Bitcoin?" to evaluate Vitalik and Shapiro's debate. A more pressing issue is whether attackers will gain a decisive advantage before defensive tools, auditing standards, and network infrastructure can fill the gaps.