Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has rejected a prediction from Silicon Valley investor Liron Shapira that artificial intelligence (AI) could trigger a 50% or bigger Bitcoin crash within two years by weakening the network’s security.
Buterin says the risk is extremely low and revealed that around 90% of his net worth is already riding on this bet.
Liron Shapira said he had 50% confidence that Bitcoin would lose more than half its value within two years because AI could weaken the security guarantees investors expect from the network.
“I claim (50% confidence) that BTC prices will crash 50%+ in the next 2 years because of AI undermining what people imagined were its security or robustness guarantees.”
His concern is that faster AI could eventually create new attacks against the technology protecting Bitcoin.
In response to Shapira’s claim, Vitalik says he remains confident in Bitcoin’s ability to address security problems.
“I take the opposite side of that.”
He explained that Bitcoin can address many network-level problems without requiring broad social agreement. For example, developers and mining pools could upgrade their systems if new attacks appeared.
Buterin also said the chance of a genuine breakthrough against Bitcoin’s hash algorithms or Proof-of-Work (PoW) is “tiny.”
That makes the main risk, in his view, less about AI suddenly breaking Bitcoin and more about how quickly the network could respond to a new threat.
Buterin went further by pointing to his own crypto holdings. He said he would offer Shapira a bet, but his existing holdings already put him heavily on the other side of the argument.
“I have already [taken] this bet,” Buterin said, noting that around 90% of his net worth is already exposed to crypto.
Liron Shapira is not the only one warning about the possible impact of AI on Bitcoin. Co-founder of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, has earlier said that the rapid growth of AI could pull money away from crypto and create pressure on Bitcoin.
Hayes warned that an AI-driven credit shock could trigger a wider market sell-off and push Bitcoin below $60,000.
Even Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff has also raised concerns, stating, “AI isn’t bullish for Bitcoin; it’s a threat to it.”
He believes AI and Bitcoin could compete for the same investment money, electricity, and data-center resources, reducing the demand that has helped drive Bitcoin’s past rallies
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