Written by: Oluwapelumi Adejumo
Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly refuted a claim predicting that artificial intelligence will cause Bitcoin's price to plummet by over 50% within two years.
The debate originated from Silicon Valley investor and AI risk commentator Liron Shapiro's assessment. He believes there is a 50% probability that Bitcoin will fall more than 50% in the next two years, reasoning that AI will undermine investor confidence in the security and robustness of Bitcoin's network.
However, Vitalik holds the opposite view. He posted on platform X, stating: "My core argument is that I'm optimistic about long-term network security; the real challenge is the transition."
Vitalik argued that Bitcoin can handle security failures that don't require broad social consensus to fix, including attacks on clients, mining pools, and other network infrastructure. He believes it's nearly impossible for AI to fundamentally break Bitcoin's hash functions or proof-of-work mechanism.
He mentioned he would have been willing to make a bet on this view with Shapiro, and his current crypto holdings already represent about 90% of his net worth. He added that this logic also applies to Ethereum.
This disagreement highlights a significant market divide: what impact will increasingly capable AI systems actually have on the cryptocurrency market?
Shapiro's argument doesn't require AI to crack Bitcoin's underlying cryptographic algorithms. Even if developers eventually patch vulnerabilities, a large-scale attack exposing security weaknesses once considered very difficult to exploit could be enough to damage market confidence.
AI Attacks Are Already Testing Crypto Defenses
Real-world cases across the crypto industry prove that the threats Shapiro warned about are already here; hackers don't need to break Bitcoin's underlying cryptography to create risks.
In August this year, Boltz indefinitely suspended its service after months of automated AI scanning attacks. A series of controlled security breaches occurred in succession, with small development teams unable to patch vulnerabilities as fast as the attacks evolved.
Boltz stated its non-custodial architecture protected user funds, but the company absorbed the losses from the attacks and ultimately concluded the business could not operate safely.
This incident confirms that AI can pressure Bitcoin's peripheral infrastructure without destroying the proof-of-work mechanism or breaking the underlying cryptographic system. Attackers rely on automated tools to find vulnerabilities en masse, far outpacing defenders' ability to identify, fix, and deploy patches.
Security industry executives predict these threats will proliferate as offensive AI capabilities continue to advance.
Deddy David, CEO of blockchain security firm Cyvers, previously told CryptoSlate that AI-powered smart contract attacks could ultimately cause economic losses reaching hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
"If AI can uncover vulnerabilities in the core infrastructure of the internet at scale, the crypto market will feel the impact first," David said.
Wallets, cross-chain bridges, exchanges, smart contracts, and the software running blockchain networks are all at risk. Compared to Bitcoin's consensus mechanism itself, these systems offer attackers many more entry points.
This is also the crux of the disagreement between Vitalik and Shapiro: AI doesn't need to crack the SHA-256 hash algorithm to inflict serious damage on the entire Bitcoin economic ecosystem.
The unresolved core question is whether these attacks can be managed through upgrades and stronger defenses as Vitalik expects, or whether they will ultimately severely shake the security assumptions underpinning investors' valuation of Bitcoin.
Crypto and Tech Giants Race to Deploy AI Defense Capabilities
The entire tech industry is engaged in an arms race to ensure defensive AI evolves at least as fast as offensive AI.
Anthropic restricted public access to one of its models because it could autonomously find software vulnerabilities and turn them into weapons. The company instead channels this capability to defenders through Project Glasswing, which involves tech and financial institutions like Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase.
This project uses Mythos Preview to identify and fix critical system vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them using similar AI tools. Anthropic has committed up to $100 million in computing credits to support the initiative.
Participants in the defensive effort extend far beyond single companies. Over 100 organizations, including Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI, have co-signed an open letter warning governments and businesses that AI-powered cyberattacks will become significantly more common and sophisticated within months.
Banks, payment giants, and tech firms like Capital One, Mastercard, Visa, Adobe, Oracle, and IBM also joined the call. They argue that as AI capabilities grow, current cybersecurity defenses will be insufficient, leaving under-resourced critical infrastructure even more vulnerable. They urge governments and tech companies to provide advanced defensive AI tools and security testing services to institutions like hospitals and water facilities.
The crypto industry is also part of this race and faces an added challenge: many of its systems host instantly transferable financial assets, and the entire infrastructure runs transparently and around the clock.
Therefore, the debate between Vitalik and Shapiro shouldn't be simplistically judged by whether "AI can destroy Bitcoin." A more pressing issue is whether attackers will gain a decisive advantage before defensive tools, audit standards, and network infrastructure can catch up.
