Buterin Disputes AI-Driven Prediction of 50%+ Bitcoin Crash Within Two Years

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin disputes a prediction that artificial intelligence could undermine confidence in Bitcoin's security and cause its price to fall by more than 50% within two years. Liron Shapira assigned a '50% confidence' level to his prediction, which hinges on AI-related security fears weakening users' perception of the network's robustness.

Buterin argues that most AI-related threats could be addressed without changing the network's core social agreement. He remains optimistic about cybersecurity over the long term and sees transition risk as the primary problem in managing a world where attackers and defenders both use increasingly capable AI systems.

The Ethereum co-founder believes that client developers and mining pools can respond to attacks through ordinary upgrades, which would be less difficult than an emergency alteration of Bitcoin's monetary rules or transaction history. He describes the probability of 'actual breaks on hashes or PoW' as 'tiny', citing the difficulty of directly compromising Bitcoin's SHA-256 hash function.