Bitcoin firms ask AI labs for trusted model access for open-source security work

The @bitcoinpolicy and a coalition of more than 40 digital asset organizations have published an open letter calling on leading artificial intelligence laboratories to grant vetted open-source security researchers controlled access to their most capable models. The letter, titled "Defenders Need the Frontier" and released on August 10, 2026, has drawn 78 signatories including Franklin Templeton (@FTDA_US), @ARKInvest, @coinbase, and @Strategy.

What the coalition is asking for

The letter does not call for unrestricted public access to advanced AI tools. Instead, the signatories proposed a controlled program covering early access to frontier cybersecurity models, sufficient computing capacity, secure research environments, and direct channels with AI laboratory security teams. The goal is to allow researchers to examine $BTC wallets, payment infrastructure, and other open-source software before attackers can exploit newly discovered weaknesses.

The letter said many digital asset defenders, including Bitcoin Core developers, lack access to lab cyber programs and can be blocked by guardrails on publicly available frontier systems, leaving them to rely on less capable open-weight models. AnchorWatch CEO Rob Hamilton (@Rob1Ham) has spoken directly to this problem, saying that safety guardrails blocked his defensive research and forced him to turn to Chinese open models instead.

Bitcoin secures more than $1 trillion in value, which the coalition says raises the stakes of any unpatched vulnerability. Sophisticated adversaries, including potential foreign actors, are reportedly already leveraging advanced AI to sustain offensive campaigns at a pace that small open-source teams struggle to absorb.

The Coldcard exploit that sharpened the urgency

The letter follows a serious hardware wallet compromise that began on July 30. An attacker exploited a five-year-old firmware flaw in Coinkite's Coldcard hardware wallet, traced to a March 2021 firmware release and a build configuration error that caused seed generation to fall back on a weak software random number generator rather than the device's hardware-based source of entropy. Galaxy Research's running tally of losses stands near 1,816 $BTC, worth close to USD 116 million, drained from more than 5,200 addresses.

The push also follows an early-August volunteer project called the Bitcoin Red Team, which used AI-assisted tools to audit Bitcoin-related code. Participants included Cashu developer Calle and AnchorWatch CEO Rob Hamilton. In one early snapshot, the group reviewed 390 projects in about 27.5 hours and filed roughly 4,962 findings, including dozens classified as critical and hundreds considered high severity.

BTCPay Server, one of the letter's signatories, wrote afterward that AI is changing the balance between attackers and defenders, and that models make it faster and cheaper to search large codebases for weaknesses. Whether AI labs will accept the coalition's proposal remains to be seen, as any response will require them to verify researchers, supervise sensitive work, and prevent advanced cybersecurity models from being redirected toward offensive use.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Bitcoin firms ask AI labs for same tools attackers already have
TRM Labs: Inside the $116 Million Coldcard Hack
Cointelegraph: Crypto Companies Urge AI Firms to Give Bitcoin Devs Early Access