There’s a saying in crypto: No more your keys, no more your coins. This is generally a warning that it is safer to keep your crypto in an offline wallet, which is harder to attack, than an online exchange, where you do not have control over the keys to the wallet that holds the funds.
However, until now, the complexity of learning how to self-secure and protect crypto has been prohibitive for many potential crypto investors, which has allowed exchanges to coinbase And gemini space station – The opening two of the game – to flourish.
But with money now more digital than ever and AI getting stronger, this story may be changing. AI like Anthropic’s Mythos, which is designed to find software vulnerabilities at breakneck speed with unprecedented accuracy, could help launch a new wave of attacks on companies built in and around crypto — an industry already working to shake off a years-old reputation of hacks, scams, and exploits.
Some investors in crypto – whose universe of investable assets has rapidly expanded beyond coins to include ETFs and equities covering various crypto themes – may take comfort from the fact that Bitcoin The blockchain has never been hacked and has been operating securely and without interruption since 2009. The threat of AI like Mythos probably won’t change this.
“Bitcoin is fundamentally secured by cryptography and a set of shared rules,” said Yan Pritzker, chief technology officer at Swan Bitcoin. “Cryptography itself is not affected by AI, and the shared rules are enforced by the network of people running Bitcoin nodes all over the world. So while AI can influence the way those people think in some way, it is actually very difficult to modify the rules of the network without full consent from the network.”
Exchanges like Coinbase, Robin HoodGemini or fastOn the other hand, they are probably the highest risk sector due to the large amounts of personally identifiable information and money they manage.
“Any other system that deals with money on a real-time basis would be a place where we would try to look for cybersecurity flaws,” said Cosmo Jiang, general partner at Pantera Capital. “While the threat actors exist for everyone, it is most likely that financial services companies or exchanges will be the first to be targeted.”
Owen Lau, an analyst at Clear Street, said the reputational risk posed to crypto exchanges by AI agents should be considered when assessing downside risk. In particular, he said, they can generate large volumes of scam emails and create synthetic identities, creating detailed profiles that pull information from exchanges or other retail platforms.
double edged sword
While AI may create new types of threats, the largest exchanges argue that it also presents an opportunity for them to improve security for their users. Both Coinbase and Binance said they are willing to invest in and use AI to make their platforms more secure.
“Mythos, and future models like it, will enable even more thorough testing of software and systems at scale,” Philip Martin, Coinbase’s chief security officer, said in a statement shared with CNBC. “This will accelerate digital threats as well as digital defense.”
He also said that although Mythos is “a highly restricted model that is not available to the public, Coinbase is in close communication with Anthropic.”
Similarly, Binance chief security officer Jimmy Su said the company is evaluating “how advances in AI could create new opportunities to strengthen cybersecurity as well as introduce new risks. As part of that work, we’re experimenting with AI to help us identify vulnerabilities in our systems faster and more comprehensively.”
Lau said the threat of AI like Mythos is not yet clear or specific enough to cause him to reconsider his bullish rating or his price target, and he cautioned investors against shying away from the sector due to short-term fear and uncertainty.
“In the near term, this will become a negative story for these types of companies,” he said of crypto exchanges. “But in the long term, I would see them as one of the first batches that comes out and can protect against these AI agents.”
