Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has pushed back against the prediction that artificial intelligence could undermine Bitcoin’s security badly enough to trigger a 50% or greater price collapse within years.
The prediction came from entrepreneur and AI-risk commentator Liron Shapira, who said he assigns a 50% probability to such an outcome.
"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," Shapira wrote on X.
Buterin said he was willing to take the opposite side.
He believes that increasingly capable AI systems may create serious cybersecurity challenges, but that does not necessarily mean Bitcoin’s fundamental security assumptions will collapse.
"I take the opposite side of that," Buterin replied.
The Ethereum co-founder says that he remains quite optimistic about cybersecurity in the long term.
Patching AI-related attacks
According to the Ethereum co-founder, Bitcoin should be capable of responding relatively smoothly to vulnerabilities that do not require changes to the network’s social consensus.
These could include network-layer attacks, vulnerabilities affecting Bitcoin client software or problems involving mining-pool infrastructure.
"I expect BTC to handle at least any issues that do not require social consensus well," Buterin said.
That distinction matters because AI does not necessarily need to crack Bitcoin’s cryptography in order to become a serious security threat.
Advanced models could instead discover ordinary software vulnerabilities in node implementations, wallets, mining infrastructure, exchanges or libraries surrounding the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Concern about precisely this possibility has grown substantially in 2026.
More than three dozen Bitcoin and cryptocurrency companies, including Coinbase, Block and BitGo, recently urged leading AI developers to give security researchers better access to powerful frontier models.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority has reportedly warned that AI systems are becoming capable of finding cybersecurity weaknesses faster than financial institutions can fix them.
A cryptographic break is unlikely
Buterin is convinced that the probability of an "actual" break affecting Bitcoin’s hashing system or proof-of-work mechanism remains extremely small.
"And I think the probability of actual breaks on hashes or PoW is tiny," Buterin wrote.
Buterin appears to believe that Bitcoin’s capacity to respond to ordinary vulnerabilities makes such an extreme market outcome unlikely.
90% of Buterin's net worth is on the line
Buterin even joked that he had little need to formally wager against Shapira.
“I would offer a bet, but given what my holdings are I'm basically taking this bet (I assume you believe the same re ETH) with ~90% of my net worth already,” he wrote.
Buterin accepts that AI will make cybersecurity considerably more challenging, However, believes most practical vulnerabilities will remain fixable and there is no fundamental danger.
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
