Buterin Slams AI Price Crash Prediction: Bitcoin Can Handle Ordinary Vulnerabilities

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has pushed back against the prediction made by AI-risk commentator Liron Shapira that artificial intelligence could cause a 50% Bitcoin price crash.

Shapira believes there is a 50% probability that AI will undermine the security of Bitcoin, but Buterin disagrees. He says that while AI systems may create serious cybersecurity challenges, it doesn't necessarily mean that Bitcoin's security will come under threat.

Buterin thinks that Bitcoin should be capable of responding relatively smoothly to vulnerabilities that don't require changes to the network's social consensus, such as network-layer attacks or software vulnerabilities in node implementations. He also believes that advanced AI models could discover ordinary software vulnerabilities in wallets, mining infrastructure, exchanges, or libraries.

Buterin is convinced that the probability of an 'actual' break affecting Bitcoin's hashing system or proof-of-work mechanism remains extremely small. He even joked that he has little need to formally wager against Shapira, as 90% of his net worth is already invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum.