Technology

Story: Bitcoin Red Team Flags 1,288 Flaws and Turns to Chinese AI After OpenAI Lockout

By Maheen Hernandez

1 / 15

1,288 Vulnerabilities and a Wallet Hack Worth $100M. The Bitcoin Red Team's work didn't happen in a vacuum.

2 / 15

A Policy Gap That's Leaving White Hats Behind. Hamilton's situation is probably not unique. Last month, industry leaders noted that only a small…

3 / 15

Rob Hamilton is furious. The CEO of AnchorWatch and driving force behind the Bitcoin Red Team went public with a finding that's hard to ignore: 1,288 critical and high-level…

4 / 15

Hamilton had been running OpenAI's Trust & Cyber capabilities through his Bitcoin Red Team work — a volunteer-driven group that combines AI analysis with manual code review…

5 / 15

That quote landed hard in certain corners of the crypto security world.

6 / 15

The Bitcoin Red Team's work didn't happen in a vacuum. The group ramped up its efforts following a breach involving the Coldcard hardware wallet — a device widely trusted in…

7 / 15

With that backdrop, Hamilton's team has been pushing hard. The 1,288 figure covers critical and high-level vulnerabilities, and the group is still going.

8 / 15

The irony he keeps coming back to: malicious actors don't face these restrictions. They can access powerful intelligence tools freely, without the ethical guardrails that slow…

9 / 15

Hamilton's situation is probably not unique. Last month, industry leaders noted that only a small number of people in the crypto space had managed to get access to the newer,…

10 / 15

Read also: Coldcard Hardware Wallet Breach Tops $100M as July Crypto Losses Hit $247M

11 / 15

The Bitcoin Red Team is volunteer-driven — that's worth sitting with for a second. These aren't well-funded government agencies or corporate security teams with unlimited budgets.

12 / 15

Chinese open-source AI models can do real work. Hamilton isn't saying they're useless. But he's clearly not happy about the tradeoff, and the patriotic framing he used wasn't…

13 / 15

It's murky. The policy logic behind restricting access to advanced AI tools probably has something to do with preventing misuse — fair enough, in principle.

14 / 15

And the Coldcard hack makes that point with $100 million worth of emphasis.

15 / 15

Read also: BIP-110 Bitcoin Fork Stuck at Two Blocks as Hashpower Stays Away

The Currency Analytics

Want the full story?