Crypto execs advise that you head for the nearest bunker

Justin Drake warns AI could crack wallet cryptography "in months, not years." Vitalik agrees but says don't rush — he's lost more to bad migrations than hacks. And 6 million BTC already sit behind exposed keys. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ SPONSORED BY Thursday, October 8, 2026 Bitcoin and ether holders urged to enter 'bunker mode' against possible AI attacks Ethereum researcher Justin Drake is urging the industry to start preparing for "bunker mode" — warning that AI could find a shortcut to break the elliptic curve cryptography protecting bitcoin and ether wallets "in months, not years" in the worst case, well before quantum computers arrive. No practical attack has been demonstrated, but AI has already cost real money: Coldcard lost 1,367 BTC through a firmware bug suspected to have been found by AI, and BTCPay Server's Lightning nodes were drained through a flaw surfaced in an AI-assisted audit. Vitalik Buterin agrees the risk is real but cautions against rushing: "I have lost more money in botched migrations than I have lost in all hacks combined." Read more → A message from eCash Bitcoin hasn't shipped a meaningful upgrade since Taproot in 2021. So on October 31, Bitcoin's 18th birthday, it's being hard forked. eCash (ECX) is a Bitcoin hard fork that activates Drivechains (BIP300/301): opt-in sidechains for payments, privacy, and prediction markets. Same ledger, same addresses, same SHA-256 proof of work, plus the upgrade Bitcoin never merged. If a sidechain succeeds, Bitcoin miners earn new fee revenue. If it fails, L1 is unaffected. At the fork block (~973,728), every self-custodied BTC address is credited ECX 1:1, no claim, no sign-up. Your BTC stays on Bitcoin, untouched. Beta is live now, with 7 pools mining and a community already shipping new wallets, explorers, and trackers, unprompted. Holding BTC in your own wallet? You're in. See how the fork works Markets Over 6 million bitcoin sit behind exposed public keys as AI warnings mount More than 6 million BTC — 31.2% of circulating supply — sit behind public keys already visible onchain, up 222,000 BTC since May according to Glassnode. Exposure varies widely: Coinbase at 10%, Binance at 83%, Robinhood at 100%, Grayscale at 49%. Fidelity is at just 2%. U.S., U.K. and El Salvador government holdings show no exposure. The figures measure address usage, not immediate risk — no practical attack has been demonstrated — but they put a concrete number on what "bunker mode" would mean at scale. 1-minute read → Business Securitize brings Apple, Nvidia and Tesla to Solana, with NYSE trading in the works Securitize launched tokenized shares of 12 U.S. mega-caps — Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Netflix, Circle, Strategy, Palantir and SpaceX — on Solana, backed one-for-one by underlying shares with voting rights and dividends intact. Jump Trading is providing liquidity, RQD handles clearing and custody, and trades settle in USDC. NYSE's 24/7 digital platform and OKXICE are both planned trading venues once they launch, subject to regulatory approval. It's the third major tokenized-stock initiative this week alone. 2-minute read → Know someone who should be reading this? Share this newsletter See all of CoinDesk’s newsletters    CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York,NY,10011,USA, Unsubscribe Manage Preferences   Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.