Adam Back Says AI Raises Crypto Hacking Risk, Urges Bitcoin Cold Storage

Blockstream CEO Adam Back said on November 14 that advances in artificial intelligence could increase the risk of cryptocurrency hacks, and he urged Bitcoin holders to move funds into cold storage rather than internet-connected wallets. Back made the remarks in comments reported by Cointelegraph on the same date.

Back, the cryptographer who invented Hashcash and now leads the Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream, argued that AI changes the economics of attack. He said AI tools can help attackers identify small implementation flaws in existing security systems that were previously hard to detect.

Why does Back point to cold storage?

His answer to the AI threat is deliberately simple: keep Bitcoin offline. Rather than relying on increasingly complex security software, Back said, users should hold coins in cold storage — wallets that are not connected to the internet.

He cited Binance's recent hack, which drained roughly $6.3 billion, as evidence of the risks built into internet-connected cryptocurrency custody systems. Even when firewalls are installed, Back said, any equipment connected to the internet remains exposed to unauthorized access. Attackers can penetrate internal networks or gain entry to unauthorized accounts, he added.

The argument carries operational weight for exchanges and custodians that sign transactions on internet-linked infrastructure. If AI lowers the cost of finding implementation bugs, perimeter defenses such as firewalls and network segmentation become less reliable as standalone protections, and the location where private keys are stored becomes the decisive security variable.

What did Blockstream launch with Thales?

On the same day as Back's comments, November 14, Blockstream announced an institutional digital-asset custody solution developed jointly with French technology company Thales. The product moves transaction signing inside dedicated security hardware, an approach designed to keep key operations isolated from general-purpose systems and reduce the risk of external intrusion.

The launch ties Back's warning to a commercial product. By anchoring signing operations in dedicated hardware rather than software running on networked machines, Blockstream and Thales are positioning hardware isolation — the institutional analogue of the cold-storage principle Back advocates for individuals — as the baseline for custody in an era of AI-assisted attacks.

What does this mean for custody standards?

The remarks and the product launch arrive as the industry absorbs the lessons of the Binance breach, the largest crypto theft on record by value. For institutions, the combined message is that defense in depth now has to account for adversaries who can automate vulnerability discovery, not merely exploit known flaws.

Back's position effectively splits the market into two tiers: cold storage and hardware-based signing for assets requiring high assurance, and internet-connected custody for operational liquidity. Expect institutional custody procurement to place growing weight on hardware isolation and verified offline signing as AI-driven attack tooling becomes more accessible over the coming cycle.

By Tom Whitfield