{"id":46917,"date":"2026-09-07T16:58:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T16:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=46917"},"modified":"2026-09-07T16:58:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T16:58:03","slug":"could-ai-cut-bitcoins-value-in-half-vitalik-buterin-says-the-odds-are-tiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=46917","title":{"rendered":"Could AI Cut Bitcoin\u2019s Value in Half? Vitalik Buterin Says the Odds Are \u2018Tiny\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<br \/><\/p>\n<p>Vitalik Buterin has rejected a warning that artificial intelligence could cause Bitcoin to lose half its value by weakening assumptions about the network&#8217;s security.<\/p>\n<p>In reply to crypto commentator Liron Shapira, Buterin said the chance of AI actually breaking Bitcoin&#8217;s hashing or proof-of-work is &#8220;tiny,&#8221; while arguing that the harder issue would be moving the network through a security upgrade.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"buterin-sees-the-bigger-risk-in-the-transition\">Buterin Sees the Bigger Risk in the Transition<\/h2>\n<p>Shapira <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/liron\/status\/2096600525152113063?s=20\">posted<\/a> that he had &#8220;50% confidence&#8221; BTC would crash 50% or more within two years because AI could undermine what people had imagined were Bitcoin&#8217;s security guarantees.<\/p>\n<p>Buterin took the other side. He <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/VitalikButerin\/status\/2096771573529080252?s=20\">said<\/a> he is optimistic about cybersecurity over the long run and sees the main risk as managing the transition itself, not a cryptographic failure, arguing Bitcoin should handle network-layer problems, the kind fixed by upgrading clients or mining pools, without needing broad social consensus.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;I expect BTC to handle at least any issues that do not require social consensus well (upgrading clients, mining pools, etc to deal with network-layer hacks is in this category) (and I think the probability of actual breaks on hashes or PoW is tiny),&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Shapira came back later with a smaller number. &#8220;I&#8217;ve updated down to 40%,&#8221; he posted, crediting Buterin and a commentator named Eliezer for the shift.<\/p>\n<p>Vista Labs pushed the debate toward coordination, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/VistaLabs_Web3\/status\/2096800268524355602?s=20\">arguing<\/a> that AI would not need to break SHA-256 if it could shorten the period between finding a vulnerability and exploiting it to less than the time a decentralized network needs to agree on an upgrade.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Does upgrade latency become the real security constraint?&#8221; the account asked.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>However, analyst Crypto Patel <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CryptoPatel\/status\/2096839798531240206?s=20\">framed<\/a> Bitcoin&#8217;s strength as its capacity to adapt once new threats appear rather than any promise that it will never face one.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"recent-attacks-show-where-ai-can-matter\">Recent Attacks Show Where AI Can Matter<\/h2>\n<p>The concern is not entirely theoretical. As <em>CryptoPotato<\/em> reported in August, Bitcoin swap service Boltz <a href=\"https:\/\/cryptopotato.com\/non-custodial-bitcoin-bridge-boltz-shuts-down-after-ai-assisted-attacks\/\">suspended<\/a> operations after AI-assisted attacks.\u00a0The five-person team said automated probing had increased before attacks accelerated, leaving it without the resources to keep operating safely.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, a recent security campaign <a href=\"https:\/\/cryptopotato.com\/ai-bitcoin-security-campaign-finds-nearly-5000-software-issues-in-390-projects\/\">found<\/a> 4,962 software issues across 390 Bitcoin-related open-source projects in about 30 hours. The tally included 85 critical and 635 high-severity findings.<\/p>\n<p>Another report published on August 10 found that Kimsuky, a North Korea-linked threat actor, had <a href=\"https:\/\/cryptopotato.com\/north-koreas-kimsuky-turns-to-ai-as-crypto-firms-face-new-threats\/\">set up<\/a> local AI environments and collected software for AI execution and automated agents. According to investigators, the group appeared to be preparing AI for malware development, data analysis, and attack techniques.<\/p>\n<p>But replying to Buterin, crypto trader Hazenlee argued that stronger generative AI could make Bitcoin&#8217;s scarcity more relevant, given that AI can create content and new tokens cheaply, but cannot simply create ownership of existing BTC or force a decentralized network to accept a false history.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/cryptopotato.com\/could-ai-cut-bitcoins-value-in-half-vitalik-buterin-says-the-odds-are-tiny\/\">Could AI Cut Bitcoin&#8217;s Value in Half? Vitalik Buterin Says the Odds Are &#8216;Tiny&#8217;<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/cryptopotato.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cryptopotato.com\/could-ai-cut-bitcoins-value-in-half-vitalik-buterin-says-the-odds-are-tiny\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vitalik Buterin has rejected a warning that artificial intelligence could cause Bitcoin to lose half its value by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-crypto","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}