Buterin Rejects AI Bitcoin Crash Forecast

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin has publicly rejected a forecast predicting that artificial intelligence could cause Bitcoin's price to fall by more than half within two years. The exchange, which took place on the social media platform X, saw Buterin take the opposite stance to AI risk commentator Liron Shapira. Shapira, who hosts the Doom Debates podcast, published his prediction on September 6, assigning a 50% confidence level to Bitcoin losing over 50% of its value within two years. His argument centers on the potential for AI to erode the security and robustness guarantees that investors expect from the network, rather than a decline in demand. He suggested that AI could weaken the cryptographic foundations protecting Bitcoin. Buterin responded on September 7, stating that he is optimistic about cybersecurity in the long term and believes Bitcoin can absorb most issues that do not require broad social consensus. He distinguished between network-level attacks, which could be addressed by upgrading clients and mining pools, and a genuine break of Bitcoin's underlying cryptography.