Crypto Firms Left Out as Select Few Gain Access to Powerful New AI Models

Many of the biggest crypto players are still waiting to gain access to powerful new AI models to strengthen their code from attacks, while only a select few have been able to get it. US-based crypto exchange Coinbase said in June that it had secured access to Anthropic's restricted Mythos model.

Zcash's Zooko Wilcox confirmed that Anthropic used the model to audit the Zcash protocol at the request of Shielded Labs, but other major crypto players are seemingly yet to get access. Binance's chief security officer Jimmy Su told Cointelegraph that 'That's one advanced frontier model that hasn't been made available to crypto just yet.'

He added that they have been trying to make inroads there and talked to other exchanges and investors, but haven't gotten the most frontier AI model, like Mythos. The uneven access creates a new security divide in an industry where exploits can put billions of dollars at risk.

Crypto executives say restricted access is initially necessary, as Anthropic says Mythos 5 uses the same underlying model as its publicly available Fable 5, but without safeguards that restrict sensitive cybersecurity work. OpenAI operates a similar tiered system: verified defenders can use GPT-5.5 with 'Trusted Access for Cyber,' while its more permissive GPT-5.5-Cyber model is reserved for a smaller group conducting authorized penetration testing.