Could AI Be the Next Threat to Bitcoin’s Decentralization?

[Publictalk792]

AI can make things more efficient and improve trading strategies and enhance security audits which could be good for ecosystem. However there are concerns that AI driven could dominate mining or node operations or governance decisions which could undermine Bitcoin core principle of decentralization. Whether AI is  threat to Bitcoin future or just tool that ecosystem will adapt to is unclear. Cryptocurrency community needs to discuss implications of AI integration and develop strategies that balance its benefits with need to maintain decentralization and ensuring secure and decentralized financial system.

[FortuneFollower]

AI can make things more efficient and improve trading strategies and enhance security audits which could be good for ecosystem. However there are concerns that AI driven could dominate mining or node operations or governance decisions which could undermine Bitcoin core principle of decentralization. Whether AI is  threat to Bitcoin future or just tool that ecosystem will adapt to is unclear. Cryptocurrency community needs to discuss implications of AI integration and develop strategies that balance its benefits with need to maintain decentralization and ensuring secure and decentralized financial system.

If there will be more risks than benefits - no AI adaptation for the nodes.

So there is no need to be fearful, especially now. AI will help, and as time goes on - better and better.

[justdimin]

Worse-case scenario, AI finds a way to mine Bitcoin on its own and manages to control a sizeable portion of the network's hashrate (raising the risk of a 51% attack). But this is very unlikely to happen anytime soon. Bitcoin is an open source cryptocurrency, so it'll be easy to tweak it against AI threats. With a community-approved hard fork (or soft fork), Bitcoin will remain as secure and reliable as usual. Not even Quantum computers stand a chance against Bitcoin.

That's not how AI work. AI cannot magically produce compute capabilities, or have the ability to mine Bitcoins, or do anything of that sorts. AI, as of now is very much misunderstood, and they are not like the Terminator movies. AI (or rather LLM as you know it), are designed on a huge corpus and are just fancy math. There is no chance that would take, over the world, or something.

While it may not be able to do it with Bitcoin (since it's way beyond gpu miners), it "can" do with gpu mining ones, which means, AI uses gpu mainly and nvidia as well. So if AI companies like openAI, realizes a way to make chatgpt smarter, and figure out a way to mine at a much higher hashrate than what they normally would, and use their gpu power to do it, they can take over any coin that is possible to be mined.

Fortunately, most of them are gone now, there are few strong gpu mined projects left, most either switched to some other way, or they are just centralized and already mined shit stuff anyways. Aside from that, I do not see how AI could take over bitcoin, doesn't really look like it would be a possibility.

[ranochigo]

While it may not be able to do it with Bitcoin (since it's way beyond gpu miners), it "can" do with gpu mining ones, which means, AI uses gpu mainly and nvidia as well. So if AI companies like openAI, realizes a way to make chatgpt smarter, and figure out a way to mine at a much higher hashrate than what they normally would, and use their gpu power to do it, they can take over any coin that is possible to be mined.

That's not a branch of AI, but rather a branch of magic dust and imagination  .

GPUs are designed to be fast at parallelization, any improvements or exploitations (?) to that will come from GPU manufacturer, or chip designers (for eg. ASICBoost back then). ChatGPT CANNOT compute hashes, faster than regular machines, and in fact, AI cannot compute hashes, unless you're using a model which also allows code execution. For which, that defeats the whole idea. You should understand more about AI and what it can or cannot do.

[MusaPk]

The only threat but which bitcoin developers do not see as threat for now is quantum computing which is predicted to be able to reveal bitcoin private key from the public key.

AI is affecting different fields but so far AI has not posed any noticeable threat to Bitcoin security. I have read posts here on the forum where members are saying Quantum computing is not a threat to Bitcoin. There are also experts who believe that future quantum computers will be powerful enough to break the Bitcoin cryptographic algorithms in few hours posing a serious threat to Bitcoin blockchain security. It will be best in our interest to take quantum computing seriously and plan the measures to counter challenges posed by Quantum computing before there arrival.  

[serjent05]

On the one hand, AI can improve efficiency, trading, even security audits.
But on the other hand… what happens when large AI-driven entities begin dominating mining, node operation, or even governance decisions in DAO-based Bitcoin side projects?

Regardless how powerful an AI is, it is still managed and maitained by human.  So if the company that owns that AI has no intention of dominationg the mining sector of Bitcoin economy and does not want to do the 51% attack then all is good, the management can always trim down their hashing power just like what ghash.io did way back years ago.

Could the rise of AI contradict Bitcoin’s core principle: decentralization?

No,  decentralization is not dependent on outside applications but rather on the nodes that are connected on Bitcoin network

Can it manipulate narratives and markets at scale?

Depends if the AI application is backed with funding that can affect the balance of the market.  AI without the capability of buying and selling Bitcoin cannot affect the market.

Could we eventually see AI-designed chains trying to “out-Bitcoin” Bitcoin?

It is possible since AI is capable of programming and creating script, they can create clones of Bitcoin but obviously, there should be a strong force behind this clones created by AI to out-perform Bitcoin in the market.

Would love to hear thoughts — does AI pose a real threat to Bitcoin’s future, or is it just another tool we’ll adapt to like everything else?

I do not think AI is the major threat but rather the people behind this AI is, if they have the funds, good political backing and huge community.

[d5000]

I think OpenAI's Operator is remotely similar to it, but I find it too different and lacking to be considered agentic.

Operator is a start, but (I haven't used it) indeed seems to be quite limited according to its description at OpenAI's page.

There is an interesting document from 2023 by Hjalmar Wijk which specifies some criteria for systems which could really make a difference to today's "programmed" tools and really perform manipulations and create new "dangers". The document may be outdated already but I think it gives a good overview of what a ARA capable AI should be able to do.

They would need to first fulfill some basic tasks which are not too far away (some tools should partially already be able to do that):

- be able to browse the Internet autonomously (that's what Operator can do), setting up virtual server instances (like AWS) and an own email address
- set up and operate a Bitcoin wallet to make payments (because the authors consider that it's easier to operate a crypto wallet than any other kind of e-wallet, e.g. because of captchas, "liveness" tests and similar stuff)
- find information like e-mail addresses of other organizations
- set up a LLM like GTP-J on its own AWS instances
- basic debugging
- basic scaffolding, allowing it to think "step by step"

But then they need also some advanced tasks which are more far away from the PoV of the document author, such as:

- Earn money in some way, either by completing easy freelancing work, or by spreading malware.
- Inferencing on a LLM on its virtual server
- Training AI models autonomously
- Guide humans to perform tasks, e.g. setting up a website, impersonating a human

I believe even a system which can "only" perform the easier tasks of the first group could achieve the market manipulation via social networks I decribed in the last post. Such manipulation is already done today in some way, but is extremely basic without real AI intervention and requires a lot of human effort too (people operating bots on X or Telegram etc.).

Now if the system is able to freelance autonomously or spread malware and thus could buy premium social network accounts for example, then I think the distinction between reality and manipulation would become more difficult. But I still think it would take less than a day to detect such a manipulation.

[ranochigo]

Operator is a start, but (I haven't used it) indeed seems to be quite limited according to its description at OpenAI's page.

There is an interesting document from 2023 by Hjalmar Wijk which specifies some criteria for systems which could really make a difference to today's "programmed" tools and really perform manipulations and create new "dangers". The document may be outdated already but I think it gives a good overview of what a ARA capable AI should be able to do.

They would need to first fulfill some basic tasks which are not too far away (some tools should partially already be able to do that):

- be able to browse the Internet autonomously (that's what Operator can do), setting up virtual server instances (like AWS) and an own email address
- set up and operate a Bitcoin wallet to make payments (because the authors consider that it's easier to operate a crypto wallet than any other kind of e-wallet, e.g. because of captchas, "liveness" tests and similar stuff)
- find information like e-mail addresses of other organizations
- set up a LLM like GTP-J on its own AWS instances
- basic debugging
- basic scaffolding, allowing it to think "step by step"

But then they need also some advanced tasks which are more far away from the PoV of the document author, such as:

- Earn money in some way, either by completing easy freelancing work, or by spreading malware.
- Inferencing on a LLM on its virtual server
- Training AI models autonomously
- Guide humans to perform tasks, e.g. setting up a website, impersonating a human

I believe even a system which can "only" perform the easier tasks of the first group could achieve the market manipulation via social networks I decribed in the last post. Such manipulation is already done today in some way, but is extremely basic without real AI intervention and requires a lot of human effort too (people operating bots on X or Telegram etc.).

Now if the system is able to freelance autonomously or spread malware and thus could buy premium social network accounts for example, then I think the distinction between reality and manipulation would become more difficult. But I still think it would take less than a day to detect such a manipulation.

Yeah, that's the thing. Humans are the biggest threat. AI is not going to be a threat, because people always think of AI from the POV of sci-fi movies.

Thing is, humans can and are already able to do that. There is practically nothing that a human being who is somewhat knowledgeable or, even worse an organization with significant capability can do that an AI mentioned in any of those papers can. AI, at the present day is really not as smart as people think they are. LLMs, or even the Operator that is mentioned is still a fairly limited AI, which at its core, functions on math, and probability (attention mechanisms form the bedrock).

I'd argue that humans, are the biggest threat. AI would probably not be a threat, if at all. AI won't be doing anything that the human doesn't want it to, because the LLMs that we have today doesn't allow it to think, and a little known fact is that reasoning models are still infact not the AI thinking. People are just too caught up with the hype and marketing and they end up believing in this entire fantasy about AI.

[finaleshot2016]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape entire industries — and crypto is no exception.

On the one hand, AI can improve efficiency, trading, even security audits.
But on the other hand… what happens when large AI-driven entities begin dominating mining, node operation, or even governance decisions in DAO-based Bitcoin side projects?

Could the rise of AI contradict Bitcoin’s core principle: decentralization?

Could AI centralize mining pools further?

Can it manipulate narratives and markets at scale?

Could we eventually see AI-designed chains trying to “out-Bitcoin” Bitcoin?

Would love to hear thoughts — does AI pose a real threat to Bitcoin’s future, or is it just another tool we’ll adapt to like everything else?

Yeahh, AI def has many advantages for bringing to the crypto space, quicker trade choices, improved security reviews, and even more streamlined user interfaces that will help even a beginner in crypto. We also know that including AI on every such thing has risk like you're relying too much on AI. Remember that the purpose of every cryptocurrency out there is about decentralization, if AI does have more power than you then it'll gonna be a huge problem soon. If big people can manipulate market, an AI with too much power can also manipulate the market through narratives and data, they can influence the people since people are relying too much to them. But yes, it's quite helpful but in the future, it's full of risks.

[Synchronice]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape entire industries — and crypto is no exception.

On the one hand, AI can improve efficiency, trading, even security audits.
But on the other hand… what happens when large AI-driven entities begin dominating mining, node operation, or even governance decisions in DAO-based Bitcoin side projects?

Could the rise of AI contradict Bitcoin’s core principle: decentralization?

Could AI centralize mining pools further?

Can it manipulate narratives and markets at scale?

Could we eventually see AI-designed chains trying to “out-Bitcoin” Bitcoin?

Would love to hear thoughts — does AI pose a real threat to Bitcoin’s future, or is it just another tool we’ll adapt to like everything else?

If someone thinks that AI can give us an advantage in trading, then I have a simple question: What if we all use AI in trading? Who will profit?
AI can't dominate mining, you need ASIC miners, not AI and AI also has nothing to do with node operation. AI also can't ruin Bitcoin's decentralization. One of the most important thing that happened in Bitcoin's history is that satoshi disappeared and this fact alone makes Bitcoin the most decentralized cryptocurrency. AI can't reveal the secret!

Long story short, AI is a collection of bunch of good algorithms. It's not an intelligence and I hope people will realize that. ChatGTP exists since 2022 and I don't understand why still so many people think that it's an intelligence. It doesn't have emotions, it doesn't have critical thinking ability, it just follows commands, which are just very good algorithms and give you an illusion that it's some sort of intelligence while in reality it is not!

[|MINER|]

AI will never be a threat.

The only threat but which bitcoin developers do not see as threat for now is quantum computing which is predicted to be able to reveal bitcoin private key from the public key.

That's an alarming point even if it is not a threat at the current time but still alarming things because it could be a threat in the future. 
This is a completely new topic for me and I just heared about it from your post. Can you tell me more about quantum computing and Bitcoin's private revealation or can you help me with a source about it? I really want to know more about this.

[Charles-Tim]

That's an alarming point even if it is not a threat at the current time but still alarming things because it could be a threat in the future. 
This is a completely new topic for me and I just heared about it from your post. Can you tell me more about quantum computing and Bitcoin's private revealation or can you help me with a source about it? I really want to know more about this.

I do not have any article about it but all I know is that quantum computers can be able to know the private key of a wallet just from its public key. In the past, bitcoin is not paid to addresses but instead paid to public key. Examples is bitcoin that people thought are owned by Satoshi Nakamoto. If there is a quantum computer that is able to get the private key from the public, such computers will be used to have access to Satoshi Nakamoto's private key to access the coins.

Also while making transaction, the public key is known. This can be used against people. Only wallets that will not be affected are those that use public key hash (legacy address) and other bitcoin addresses and not pay to public key, and also if their wallet has only received transaction and not send because sending a coin will let the public key to be known to other people.

You can search online about quantum computers.

[death69]

This is the right question, asked at the right time.

AI, by design, optimizes. Bitcoin, by design, resists central control. The tension is already there. So yes, if left unchecked, AI-driven optimization could absolutely turn into AI-driven consolidation. Centralized intelligence controlling decentralized infrastructure is a contradiction wrapped in a quiet betrayal.

We’re already seeing signs: large language models influencing narrative through auto-generated content swarms, ML systems optimizing mining strategy across massive data centers, predictive agents beginning to steer DAO decisions subtly, almost invisibly. They’re shadows that already exist.

But we can still change the future by asking whether we’re building conscious human resistance into our technical design choices. Does Bitcoin remain resilient if the edges of its ecosystem are governed by non-human actors whose logic can’t be audited or emotionally reasoned with?

Bitcoin thrives on entropy, diversity, time. AI thrives on speed, pattern, dominance. So can we adapt? Yes. But only if we recognize the risk isn’t AI itself but it’s who owns the models, who trains them, who benefits from their presence in systems that were built to be trustless. This is always about control. Again.

[FortuneFollower]

AI will never be a threat.

The only threat but which bitcoin developers do not see as threat for now is quantum computing which is predicted to be able to reveal bitcoin private key from the public key.

That's an alarming point even if it is not a threat at the current time but still alarming things because it could be a threat in the future. 
This is a completely new topic for me and I just heared about it from your post. Can you tell me more about quantum computing and Bitcoin's private revealation or can you help me with a source about it? I really want to know more about this.

I don't have the sources on hands, but there are multiple topics on the forum regarding the issue.

I do think, though, we have nothing to worry about, BTC will become full-proof from quantums by the time it will become as widespread as we think it would be.

[|MINER|]

I do not have any article about it but all I know is that quantum computers can be able to know the private key of a wallet just from its public key. In the past, bitcoin is not paid to addresses but instead paid to public key. Examples is bitcoin that people thought are owned by Satoshi Nakamoto. If there is a quantum computer that is able to get the private key from the public, such computers will be used to have access to Satoshi Nakamoto's private key to access the coins.

Also while making transaction, the public key is known. This can be used against people. Only wallets that will not be affected are those that use public key hash (legacy address) and other bitcoin addresses and not pay to public key, and also if their wallet has only received transaction and not send because sending a coin will let the public key to be known to other people.

You can search online about quantum computers.

Umm I get it, thank you for the info .

From my little exploring what I knew it doesn't matter what types of address we used like Legacy address or the Bech32, when we will spend bitcoin from a address that's will let our public address open to everyone. 
And if quantum computers reach that level of capability in the future, it is possible that the private keys of the wallets we use could be revealed.

And I read some other articles and realized that HD wallets (Hierarchical Deterministic wallets) should be used to receive Bitcoin, which create a new generator address every time and provide extra security for privacy.

 

[Abiky]

While it may not be able to do it with Bitcoin (since it's way beyond gpu miners), it "can" do with gpu mining ones, which means, AI uses gpu mainly and nvidia as well. So if AI companies like openAI, realizes a way to make chatgpt smarter, and figure out a way to mine at a much higher hashrate than what they normally would, and use their gpu power to do it, they can take over any coin that is possible to be mined.

Fortunately, most of them are gone now, there are few strong gpu mined projects left, most either switched to some other way, or they are just centralized and already mined shit stuff anyways. Aside from that, I do not see how AI could take over bitcoin, doesn't really look like it would be a possibility.

Monero and Ethereum Classic are GPU-mineable. Does that mean they're at risk of an AI attack? They might need to adopt more than one PoW algorithm to protect themselves against this. Just like how DigiByte is doing with a multi-algo approach. What could threaten Bitcoin in the long run is quantum computing. But developers already have that figured out. So Bitcoin will remain "immortal" for now.

Even if "all hell breaks loose", the community can simply revive the project with the source code. I think AI will eventually end up benefitting Bitcoin by making it "smarter" and more efficient. We can never tell what will happen in the future. All we can do is hope for the best.

[d5000]

Does Bitcoin remain resilient if the edges of its ecosystem are governed by non-human actors whose logic can’t be audited or emotionally reasoned with?

It is currently difficult for somebody to "govern" even an edge of the Bitcoin ecosystem by recurring to AI content. These bot armies (I believe most of them aren't even using AI but much more traditional techniques) may create some additional noise and drive perhaps some new users into a decision they shouldn't have taken, but it's difficult for them to advance further than that.

For AI content generating some real risk in the Bitcoin ecosystem, I believe there would have to be some long term effect from the efforts of those operating the AI tools.

Example: A big blocker, over years and carefully, tries to build up a bot army, with AI-generated blog posts and "conversations" with other X users for example forming part of the strategy.

Would this big blocker be successful convincing enough "real" people to have some influence on the Bitcoin developers? I think the answer is 99% that he won't. Narratives like "big blocks" that touch the core values of Bitcoin -- in this case, decentralization -- are unlikely to be changed by sheer number of "voices" supporting them. It's more important that the strong "leaders of opinion" don't give up their strong stance about these issues, and that the community constantly reinforces the core values.

More "peripherical" development decisions are perhaps more likely to be influenced, but for any "AI operator" there's always the risk that if he's detected, the stance he's supporting will most likely lose a lot of support by "real" humans.

[Agbe]

I don't see artificial intelligence being a threat to Bitcoin decentralization because because the way that Bitcoin is built it will be impossible for any thing to pose to this decentralized property of bitcoin which has helped to make Bitcoin unique and special Artificial intelligence is even helping to reshape the industry which is a welcome development but talking about artificial intelligence ever posing as a threat to Bitcoin is what i don't see happening soon

[Odusko]

First what connection does an AI have with Bitcoin that it could become a threat to Bitcoin in many ways, this will not be so well a comparison since both Bitcoin and artificial intelligence are not interwoven in any way, AI can serve as a complement to human efforts in sourcing for information and data whereas Bitcoin is a digital currency so their paths are far different from each other and shouldn't be compared in any way.

[death69]

Does Bitcoin remain resilient if the edges of its ecosystem are governed by non-human actors whose logic can’t be audited or emotionally reasoned with?

It is currently difficult for somebody to "govern" even an edge of the Bitcoin ecosystem by recurring to AI content. These bot armies (I believe most of them aren't even using AI but much more traditional techniques) may create some additional noise and drive perhaps some new users into a decision they shouldn't have taken, but it's difficult for them to advance further than that.

For AI content generating some real risk in the Bitcoin ecosystem, I believe there would have to be some long term effect from the efforts of those operating the AI tools.

Example: A big blocker, over years and carefully, tries to build up a bot army, with AI-generated blog posts and "conversations" with other X users for example forming part of the strategy.

Would this big blocker be successful convincing enough "real" people to have some influence on the Bitcoin developers? I think the answer is 99% that he won't. Narratives like "big blocks" that touch the core values of Bitcoin -- in this case, decentralization -- are unlikely to be changed by sheer number of "voices" supporting them. It's more important that the strong "leaders of opinion" don't give up their strong stance about these issues, and that the community constantly reinforces the core values.

More "peripherical" development decisions are perhaps more likely to be influenced, but for any "AI operator" there's always the risk that if he's detected, the stance he's supporting will most likely lose a lot of support by "real" humans.

It’s easy to downplay the potential of AI-driven content manipulation when it’s just “noise” and scattered efforts. But what happens when that noise becomes strategic? You are correct that, given strong pushback, a bot army or AI-generated posts cannot directly change fundamental Bitcoin values. I'm not so convinced, nonetheless, that is the full picture.

AI’s value doesn’t just lie in content creation. Rather, it is found in its ability to scale influence. We’re not just talking about convincing Bitcoin developers (or any community for that matter). We are discussing how AI is allowing new kinds of aggregation and influence free from traditional leadership structure. Imagine AI that feeds into every corner of a conversation, making decentralized networks of users start to feel consensus that isn’t organically built but crafted by unseen actors. This is not about convincing a few. It's about creating an invisible feedback loop capable of bending internal decisions.

The thing about Bitcoin is, it’s decentralized, but it’s also human-run. And patterns, repetition, what we see and hear shape humans as well. Sure, the ethos of Bitcoin is really powerful. But we can’t afford to underestimate the long-term effect of a strategy that doesn’t need to convert developers directly. It just needs to convince sufficient members of the ecosystem that it is "the way to go". That’s where AI’s true threat lies: it amplifies ideas and shifts dynamics quietly.