Vitalik Buterin rejects claims AI could crash Bitcoin by 50%

Vitalik Buterin just told one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal AI doomsayers to sit down. The Ethereum co-founder fired back at angel investor Liron Shapira’s prediction that artificial intelligence could crater Bitcoin’s price by more than half within two years, calling the underlying premise, that AI could fundamentally compromise proof-of-work security, “extremely low” probability.

The exchange, which played out publicly on September 7, quickly rippled across crypto media. Shapira had posted his thesis with what he described as 50% confidence: AI advancements could shake Bitcoin’s security foundations enough to trigger a price collapse of over 50%. Buterin wasn’t having it.

The bet behind the rebuttal

What made Buterin’s response more than just another Twitter debate was the skin in the game. He revealed that approximately 90% of his personal net worth is effectively aligned with the thesis that Bitcoin’s cryptographic underpinnings will hold.

Shapira’s argument centers on the idea that rapidly advancing AI systems could discover weaknesses in SHA-256 hashing or other cryptographic primitives that secure the Bitcoin network. If an AI could efficiently reverse-engineer proof-of-work puzzles or forge transactions, the entire trust model collapses. In practice, Buterin argues, the math doesn’t support the fear.

The risk that proof-of-work and hash mechanisms get fundamentally compromised sits at the far end of the probability spectrum, according to Buterin. SHA-256 has been scrutinized by cryptographers for decades. Breaking it wouldn’t just threaten Bitcoin. It would undermine most of modern internet security, from banking to military communications.

AI as shield, not just sword

Buterin’s counterargument wasn’t purely defensive. He’s been building a broader thesis for months that AI represents both risk and opportunity for blockchain security. On the opportunity side, he’s pointed to AI-assisted formal verification, a process where machine learning helps mathematically prove that code behaves exactly as intended.

Buterin’s position essentially boils down to this: AI will make both attackers and defenders stronger, and the defenders have structural advantages when it comes to cryptographic security. Breaking encryption is computationally brutal. Verifying encryption is comparatively cheap.

Why this debate matters for markets

Shapira’s 50% confidence level is worth examining on its own. In prediction market terms, that’s a coin flip. He’s not saying AI will definitely break Bitcoin. He’s saying there’s an even chance it happens within 24 months.

Buterin’s public and forceful rejection of that probability carries weight precisely because of who he is. He’s not a Bitcoin maximalist cheerleading his own bags. He’s the founder of Ethereum, Bitcoin’s largest competitor by most measures. When the guy who could theoretically benefit from Bitcoin’s failure tells you Bitcoin’s security is sound, markets tend to listen.

The 90% net worth figure adds another layer. Institutional investors increasingly pay attention to insider conviction signals. A founder concentration of that magnitude reads as extreme confidence in the underlying technology stack, not just Ethereum’s, but the broader cryptographic infrastructure that both chains share.

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