AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy raised concerns on Monday about how advanced AI could threaten Bitcoin’s (CRYPTO: BTC) security.
Bitcoin’s Security at Risk?
During an interview with entrepreneur and investor Anthony Pompliano, Yampolskiy examined the relationship between AI and Bitcoin.
“So natively, AI lives on networks,” he stated. “A lot of mining on Bitcoin was probably what created this hardware overhang for us to train capable AI models. So there seems to be a deep connection.”
Yampolskiy, however, cautioned that “advanced” AI systems could turn out to be “really amazing hackers”, highly effective at social engineering attacks.
“So I think for an average person, keeping their Bitcoin secure will become almost impossible,” he added.
Yampolskiy, professor of computer science at the University of Louisville, said that with sophisticated AI, you’d always have something watching and tracking your internet activity.
“You can get fake videos, fake audio, people you know telling you to do something. You cannot reliably know that what you are connecting to on a website is not a deepfake or recently generated,” he said. “It’s a much harder environment to not get scammed.”
The AI ‘Threat’ to Bitcoin?
Yampolskiy’s concerns are not unfounded.
Stephanie Talamantez, a former FBI agent turned security expert, told Benzinga in June that North Korean hackers have progressed from simple hacking to sophisticated social engineering techniques to target reputable cryptocurrency companies.
Economist Peter Schiff also said that "powerful" AI could "discover vulnerabilities" in Bitcoin’s code, cryptography or network security. His argument: AI isn’t bullish for Bitcoin; it’s a threat to it.
A report by the on-chain analytics firm Chainalysis found that AI-enabled cryptocurrency scams were 4.5 times more profitable than traditional scams in 2025.
However on the flip side, Cryptocurrency firms such as Binance are using AI-powered tools and models to fight AI-driven scams. The platform said that more than half of its fraud controls are AI-powered.
Price Action: At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $80,507.29, up 4.09% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Image via Shutterstock/ ozrimoz
Login to comment