AI Has Made Bitcoin Software a Target—This Group Is Fighting Back

In brief

• In an interview with Decrypt, Bitcoin Red Team member Calle said Chinese AI models are used far more than U.S. models for security research because American models often block cybersecurity-related requests.
• The group has proactively scanned much of Bitcoin's significant open-source ecosystem and works directly with projects to identify and fix vulnerabilities.
• Calle warned that AI allows people without advanced security expertise to carry out exploits from beginning to end.

AI is putting powerful hacking capabilities in the hands of people with little cybersecurity expertise, forcing crypto developers into a race to find vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.

One group taking on that challenge is the Bitcoin Red Team, whose pseudonymous member and Bitcoin software developer Calle said formed as an emergency effort to find AI-assisted security threats across the Bitcoin ecosystem.

"At this point, it is a question about time,” Calle, who helps maintain the open-source protocol Cashu, told Decrypt. “The reason why the Bitcoin Red Team exists right now is because we need to get ahead of the attackers as fast as possible.”

The Bitcoin Red Team consists of about 20 to 25 volunteers, according to Calle, many of whom prefer to remain pseudonymous, such as Bitcoin privacy protocol developers Stu, Talip, and fellow Cashu dev thesimplekid. Others in the group include Bitcoin developers Ben Carmen, Daniela Brozzoni, and James O'Beirne, and Vinteum Bitcoin R&D Center board member Bruno Garcia.