Bitcoin unlikely to crash 50% on AI risks: Buterin says

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has dismissed claims by investor and AI commentator Liron Shapira, who predicted with 50% confidence that artificial intelligence risks could cut Bitcoin's price in half within two years by eroding trust in the network's security. Buterin expressed long-term optimism regarding cybersecurity, arguing that Bitcoin's fundamental architecture—including its SHA-256 hashing and proof-of-work mechanism—remains resilient against direct cryptographic compromises from AI models. Buterin noted that while artificial intelligence might assist threat actors in identifying software bugs, client vulnerabilities, and mining pool flaws, defenders can utilize similar tools to audit code and deploy patches through routine software updates without fracturing network consensus. Bitcoin security coalitions have separately lobbied major artificial intelligence laboratories for frontier model access to stay ahead of automated attack vectors. Bitcoin showed no direct price reaction to the debate, trading near $79,590. Analysts emphasize that while perimeter infrastructure and wallet entropy remain targets for automated exploits, catastrophic failures of Bitcoin's core consensus rules remain highly improbable.