Urgent warning about AI and Bitcoin security

On October 7, 2026, Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, posted an urgent call to the blockchain industry on X. Artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly in mathematics, potentially compromising Bitcoin's security. A hacker would then be able to trace back to a user's private key and empty their account. The stakes amount to billions. No such attack has targeted the network to date, but the debate has already mobilized the cryptocurrency community.

Bitcoin's security relies on ECDSA

Bitcoin relies on an algorithm called ECDSA. This system uses elliptic curves to generate a key pair, one public and one private. The first verifies a transaction, the second signs it. No one has yet solved the inverse equation. However, Justin Drake, the author of this call, believes that AI will soon be able to achieve this.

AI produces groundbreaking mathematical research

On October 6, 2026, OpenAI published 722 mathematical manuscripts on GitHub. These works cover about twenty fields. They challenge assumptions considered accepted in algebra, number theory, and logic. According to Decrypt, the internal AI model produced these results in just a few weeks. The researcher sees this as a sign that the elliptic curves of ECDSA might break faster than expected.

Protecting private keys through address migration

Migrating funds to new addresses reduces exposure of the public key code. On Bitcoin, the address corresponds to a fingerprint of this code. This code remains invisible until the first signed transaction. By staying on an address with no history, the holder keeps their hidden key and complicates the process of tracing back to the private key.