Vitalik Buterin responded on X to investor Liron Shapira’s forecast that Bitcoin could crash by 50% or more within two years. Shapira linked such a scenario to the development of AI and the risk that the market could lose confidence in the security of the network. Buterin took the opposite view and specifically pointed to the negligible probability of hash functions or proof-of-work being compromised.
“I would offer a bet, but given what my holdings are I'm basically taking this bet (I assume you believe the same re ETH) with ~90% of my net worth already” he wrote.
Buterin’s position is based on long-term optimism about cybersecurity. He believes the key issue is not where the network ultimately ends up, but how it gets through the transition period.
“Bitcoin will handle at least the issues that don’t require social consensus,” the developer believes.
He included client upgrades, how mining pools respond, and network-level attacks in this category.
According to Shapira, AI development may not break the underlying cryptography itself, but could undermine the market’s confidence in its reliability. He considers buying long put options on Bitcoin ETFs, but does not believe cryptocurrencies will displace fiat currencies.
“Governments make fiat valuable, while post-human AI will be able to trade without blockchains,” he argues.
Commenters pointed out that a price forecast is not the same as a forecast of the Bitcoin network being hacked. The network has already experienced critical client bugs, and such incidents, including cases that led to the chain stopping and some participants switching to another fork, have been considered fixable as long as the underlying cryptography itself remains intact.
Another question was also raised, which Buterin did not address in his response: AI could discover a vulnerability that would require a contentious fork and a change to the consensus rules. In that case, the issue would no longer be breaking a hash, but a transition to a new set of rules.
Commenters also drew a distinction between protocol security and the security of custodial wallets: hacks of custodial wallets were considered a client-level issue rather than a problem with the network itself.