AI Goes to Work for Bitcoin

Spiral, the Bitcoin-focused division of Jack Dorsey's company Block, has open-sourced its new project Loupe. The goal is to continuously audit Bitcoin software using the latest AI models.

This is an extremely important and timely initiative. Not long ago, I wrote about the sharp rise in crypto hacks and how it seemed to coincide with the emergence of the mysterious closed version of Claude Mythos - an LLM rumored to be exceptionally good at finding software vulnerabilities.

If attackers are already using AI to discover exploits, then the Bitcoin ecosystem needs an equivalent defensive tool. That is exactly what Loupe is trying to become.

AI dramatically lowers the cost of vulnerability research and reduces the skill barrier for offensive security work. You no longer need to be a brilliant hacker with good intuition and years of experience to discover ways around protections. AI can increasingly do much of the work on its own. So why not put AI to work openly, continuously scanning for weaknesses and identifying dangerous issues before attackers find them first?

In crypto, the cost of mistakes is too high. I am convinced that not every crypto project will survive the emerging AI arms race between attackers and defenders. That is why it is encouraging to see people in the Bitcoin community acting early - putting AI in service of Bitcoin rather than allowing it to become a weapon used primarily against it. Bitcoin now has a real chance to withstand this new era of security challenges.

Meanwhile, ordinary Bitcoin users are also finding ways to put AI to work for themselves. Just today, one user shared how Claude helped recover access to a wallet containing 5 BTC from 2015. Take a look at the post on X - it is genuinely inspiring.