Bitcoin Researchers Abandon US AI Due to Restrictive Policies and Security Risks

Bitcoin security researchers are turning to Chinese AI models due to restrictive policies from American frontier systems. Rob Hamilton, CEO of AnchorWatch, a Bitcoin self-custody insurance company, stated that he will rely on Chinese open-source models to secure critical infrastructure because American models refuse or restrict legitimate defensive work.

A letter signed by over 70 organizations, including major custodians and exchanges, called on frontier AI labs to establish clear trusted-access programs for qualified open-source and digital-asset defenders. The signatories argue that current restrictions leave researchers without access to the strongest models, forcing them to rely on less capable alternatives.

Concerns about hosting infrastructure of Chinese models being an attack vector can be mitigated since they are open source and can be run on American-hosted data centers. A volunteer effort known as the Bitcoin Red Team formed to conduct large-scale AI-assisted audits of Bitcoin open-source repositories using models like Kimi K3.

Early results showed thousands of findings across hundreds of projects, including dozens of critical issues. Developers should maintain permanent AI audit pipelines and treat unmaintained repositories as likely broken and unreliable.