Vitalik Buterin Shields Crypto Transactions With Private AI Setup

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has set up a private AI system on his own hardware to protect his crypto transactions. He operates it using an open-source model called Qwen3.5:35B and software called llama-server, which runs on an Nvidia 5090 GPU.

The setup is designed to address Buterin's concern about cloud-based AI tools posing a serious threat to personal privacy. To maintain security, he keeps a full offline copy of Wikipedia and technical documentation stored locally on his machine, reducing the need for external search queries that could reveal what users are looking for.

The AI system is connected to his Ethereum wallet and messaging accounts through a tool Buterin built to allow his AI to read Signal messages and emails without restriction. However, it blocks the AI from sending messages outside his own accounts unless manually approved by a human.