Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has taken “the opposite side” of a prediction that artificial intelligence will slash bitcoin’s price in half over the next two years, and roughly 90% of his net worth is tied to this stance.
The Bet on the Table
Yesterday, angel investor and Doom Debates podcast host Liron Shapira—who debated Buterin on AI risk last year—published his claim, declaring:
I claim (50% confidence) that BTC prices will crash 50%+ in the next 2 years because of AI undermining what people imagined were its security or robustness guarantees.
About half a day later, Buterin responded by stating that he takes “the opposite side of that stance.” His reasoning stems from being “quite optimistic about cybersecurity in the long term,” while viewing “the primary problem as getting the transition right.” Furthermore, he anticipates that “BTC will handle at least any issues that do not require social consensus well.” Upgrading clients and mining pools to address network-layer hacks falls into that category, he explained, while noting that “the probability of actual breaks on hashes or PoW is tiny.” He concluded by stating:
I would offer a bet, but given what my holdings are, I’m basically taking this bet (I assume you believe the same re ETH) with ~90% of my net worth already.
The Bet From Both Sides
Shapira’s claim involves perception just as much as code. His phrasing targets what people imagined bitcoin’s guarantees were, meaning the market could re-price BTC over fear of an AI-discovered flaw long before any actual exploit occurs. Under that interpretation, a 50% drawdown requires only a collapse in confidence rather than a broken hash function.
By contrast, Buterin’s response reads like an engineer’s assessment, dividing the risk into two distinct categories:
- Client software bugs
- Mining-pool infrastructure and the peer-to-peer layer can be patched by developers and node operators without altering Bitcoin’s rules.
A hard fork and social consensus would be required for a genuine break of SHA-256 or proof-of-work (PoW), which he places into the “tiny” category.
During the same night, he highlighted the rapid pace at which new techniques for succinct proofs (SNARKs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) have emerged, particularly throughout 2026, within a separate thread.
He argued that “hard problems are abundant,” so cryptography continuously finds new footing as old assumptions erode. Ethereum’s own roadmap, which developers overhauled on Aug. 10, elevated quantum safety to the top of the priority list for that exact reason.
The Details That Matter
Rather than representing a fresh position, Buterin’s “90%” remark asserts that his existing asset portfolio—composed predominantly of ETH—already faces total loss if artificial intelligence shatters the cryptographic assumptions underlying both networks. His parenthetical comment to Shapira, “I assume you believe the same re ETH,” drives home the reality that a hash-level assault would never stop at Bitcoin alone.
Currently, bitcoin hovers near $80,000 following a three-month peak of $82,239 last week, before momentum stalled underneath a $80,335 to $82,239 resistance zone throughout the weekend.
Large holders display no defensive positioning; instead, Cryptoquant figures indicate that addresses controlling 100 BTC or greater injected roughly 60,000 BTC into their reserves over August, effectively absorbing the exact volume offloaded by minor accounts.
