AI Threatens Bitcoin Security Before Quantum Computers Do, Researchers Warn

A breakthrough in cryptographic research by AI startup Anthropic has raised concerns about the future of Bitcoin's security. The company's Claude Mythos Preview model discovered novel attacks against weakened versions of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), one of the world's most widely used encryption systems.

The AI-generated attack made breaking the weakened algorithm between 200 and 1,000 times faster, demonstrating that frontier AI models are becoming capable of producing original cryptographic research. Anthropic also reported that Mythos devised an improved attack against HAWK, a post-quantum cryptographic signature scheme.

This discovery has sparked discussions about whether or not artificial intelligence could actually threaten post-quantum encryption before quantum computers crack today's Bitcoin signatures. Coin Center Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh joked about the 'funniest timeline,' in which Bitcoin upgrades to a lattice-based post-quantum signature scheme only for advanced large language models to break the underlying mathematics before quantum computers ever manage to pose a threat.

Despite the attention surrounding Anthropic's findings, researchers stressed that neither Bitcoin nor today's internet encryption is in immediate danger. The attacks targeted deliberately weakened cryptographic systems used for research rather than production-grade implementations. Modern AES remains secure.