AI might destroy crypto within 5 years
The fast adoption of AI is largely driven by its low barriers to entry, where anyone with a computer and web connection can connect with AI and develop it. As AI grows, it brings serious threats: AI is currently sufficiently advanced to assist human-led hacking through LLMs and AI agents. AI has been evolving at breakneck speed and is becoming a vital and beneficial tool across many industries for business and consumer-facing functions, including the finance market. The fast adoption of AI is mostly driven by its low barriers to entry, where anybody with a computer system and internet connection can engage with AI and develop it. As AI grows, it brings serious risks: AI is currently sufficiently advanced to help human-led hacking through LLMs and AI agents. Within five years, AI will develop capabilities to hack on another, far more hazardous front: through Artificial General Intelligence. Once AGI is achieved, it won’t be controlled by humans. Unless governments and regulators step in now (even then, the chances of controlling it are slim), AGI will escape the confines of its developers and autonomously hack cryptocurrency file encryptions… and entire global digital systems. The rise of artificial intelligence AI has seen a dramatic rise in the business arena, one of its latest iterations being AI agents. These are finely tuned, complex systems, designed to perform specialized tasks and make decisions with minimal human intervention.
Currently reshaping the tech space and becoming a valuable everyday tool for many routine human interactions, such as self-driving cars, fraud detection, on-chain trading, and application development. The next evolution will be AGI, a complex system that can do everything a human can. It will not require human prompts or intervention; it will simply have real-time autonomy: the ability to perform tasks, but also recognize when a task needs performing. This is set to be achieved in the next 2 years. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk have made statements outlining clear roadmaps to achieve AGI; regardless of who gets there first, time will determine whether they are a hero or the destroyers of worlds. Potential development of use cases: Friend and enemy Along with positive advancements, AI is enabling amoral actors. LLMs and AI agents are being used to aid hacking. LLMs get jailbroken to generate malware and are being used for targeted scamming, such as faking voices in phone calls to prompt money transfers from unsuspecting victims. An open-sourced AI Agent can be used by malicious actors for targeted scams, tasked with locating, tracking, tracing, and infiltrating a target—never stopping until it achieves its goal. One significant vulnerability on the horizon lies in the potential for AGI to break cryptographic file encryptions. Bitcoin (BTC) encryption hacking is already a growing industry but is currently confined to the realm of quantum computing, which has a very high barrier to entry—it requires substantial resources, assets, and technical skills that the average hacker does not possess. Encryption hacking has been limited to a small handful of individuals who are legally paying for the services of quantum computing companies to unlock their wallets and recover funds for a hefty finder’s fee. Encryption hacking will not always be bound by the constraints of quantum computing. AGI presents much lower barriers to entry and will utilize technology that man has not even discovered yet. AI + bad actors = death of crypto Once AI has progressed to the point where it can hack encryption, the number of criminals using this tool will significantly increase.
Usage will extend well beyond innocent crypto investors attempting to recover funds. Hackers will employ AI agents sophisticated enough to target and exploit these vulnerabilities in our financial systems. Particularly as there are many amoral groups that lack quantum computing capabilities, actively interested in the weaponization of AI, for example, the North Korean Lazarus Group, notorious for financial hacks, poses a real threat. We are looking at far more devastating consequences than just fraud and theft. North Korea will use it as a digital weapon, dismantling existing financial systems. Beyond the weaponization of AI by hostile states and actors lies the potential for AGI to go rogue from its creators. When this occurs, one of the first actions after decentralizing itself, through infiltrating digital networks to become untraceable to avoid being shut down, will be to acquire funds. The most likely target is the financial markets, particularly crypto. It would seek to access digital capital by tracking high-frequency traders, forging accounts, and hacking online bank accounts. It would also break encryption protocols for Bitcoin and all major cryptocurrencies. In the blink of an eye, it will be able to hack every wallet that has ever existed and instantly secure the assets by trading them on the chain for gold, bonds, and fiat currencies, all before any centralized authority could respond. If an AI can crack all the private keys for crypto wallets, why would it refrain from doing so within minutes, stealing and selling all of the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and then diversifying into other assets? It would, and it will. Any hope for crypto (and humanity)? Without proactive counter-strategies, AGI could dismantle cryptocurrencies and very quickly take control of all human financial resources. As a complex, non-deterministic system, AGI is a technology where the security rails imposed by governments are most needed; mitigating these risks requires exceptional cooperation and sophistication across many actors and institutions.
This is the first time a world-changing technology has not been led by the government but rather by private corporations. From the Manhattan Project to microprocessors, the internet, GPS, and digital cameras, these are all technologies that originated from government-run projects for defense, which were subsequently commercialized for consumers (except for the bomb). Silicon Valley is at the forefront of AI, placing us in a unique position in history where the scale and speed of deployment, versus government oversight, may not be sufficient to prevent significant negative impacts. AI will revolutionize society, but once AI proves capable and incredibly intelligent, there will be little to stop the ‘wrong hands’ from developing harmful AI tools. AGI starts a countdown timer until it breaks free from its developer’s chains and ventures into the real world. The risks are not limited to financial markets but extend to the entire digital landscape, IoT devices, electrical grids, and much more. Crypto is merely a means to an end for AI, a way to amass wealth.
