Vitalik Buterin now confident AI won’t break crypto, betting 90% of his net worth

A notable development has hit the crypto markets. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has pushed back against predictions that artificial intelligence could trigger a 50% Bitcoin crash within two years. The debate began after Silicon Valley investor and AI-risk commentator Liron Shapiro said he sees a 50% probability that Bitcoin will fall more than 50% over the next two years because AI undermines what investors believe are the network’s security and robustness guarantees. However, Buterin took the other side of this position, saying: My basic reasons are that I am quite optimistic about cybersecurity in the long term and I see the primary problem as being getting the transition.

Vitalik Buterin Co-Founder Ethereum Share quote View profile Buterin argued that Bitcoin should be able to handle security failures that do not require social consensus, including attacks affecting clients, mining pools and other network infrastructure. He also placed a very low probability on AI producing a fundamental break in Bitcoin’s hashing functions or proof-of-work system. He said he would normally offer Shapiro a wager on the outcome, but his existing crypto holdings already amount to effectively making that bet with roughly 90% of his net worth.

Market Dynamics

Buterin also suggested the same argument should apply to Ethereum. The disagreement captures a growing divide over what increasingly capable AI systems mean for crypto security. Shapiro’s argument does not require AI to break Bitcoin’s underlying cryptography.

A wave of attacks that exposes weaknesses investors previously assumed were difficult or impossible to exploit could be enough to damage confidence, even if developers eventually repair the vulnerabilities. Buterin is making a different calculation. He expects most AI-driven security failures to remain fixable and believes defenders will eventually benefit from the same technological advances attackers are using.

AI attacks are already testing crypto defenses Evidence from across the crypto industry suggests the threat behind Shapiro’s warning is already becoming operational, even without a breakthrough against Bitcoin’s underlying cryptography. In August, Bitcoin swap provider Boltz indefinitely suspended its service after months of automated, AI-assisted probing led to several contained exploits and began moving faster than its small development team could patch vulnerabilities. Boltz said its non-custodial architecture protected customer funds, but the company absorbed losses from the exploits and eventually concluded it could no longer safely run the service.

Market Impact

The episode showed how AI could pressure the infrastructure surrounding Bitcoin without compromising proof-of-work or breaking the network’s cryptography. Attackers instead used automation to repeatedly search for weaknesses faster than defenders could investigate, patch, and deploy fixes. That is the type of threat security executives expect to spread as offensive AI capabilities improve.

Deddy David, chief executive of blockchain security firm Cyvers, previously told that the financial exposure from AI-powered crypto attacks could eventually reach hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. “If AI can identify vulnerabilities at scale across core internet infrastructure, crypto will be one of the first markets to feel the impact,” David said. The risk extends across wallets, bridges, exchanges, smart contracts and the software used to operate blockchain networks.

Those systems provide attackers with considerably more potential entry points than Bitcoin’s core consensus mechanism itself. The distinction is central to the disagreement between Buterin and Shapiro, as AI does not have to break SHA-256 to cause serious damage across the Bitcoin economy. The unresolved question is whether those attacks remain problems developers can contain through upgrades and stronger defenses, as Buterin expects, or become severe enough to undermine the security assumptions investors have priced into Bitcoin.

Crypto markets are watching this development closely as investors weigh its potential impact on prices.