Bitcoin Bug Fixed by AI: Promise & Friction Emerge

A Bitcoin contributor has fixed a wallet crash bug using AI tools. Rob Hamilton, CEO of AnchorWatch, had his first commit merged into Bitcoin Core on August 20, after using AI models to find the problem. Here's the thing: Hamilton's effort is part of his "Bitcoin Red Team" initiative, which uses AI to audit Bitcoin-related open-source code. This project, involving 16 volunteers, found 4,962 potential issues across over 390 repositories in about 30 hours. Of these, 85 were critical. What's interesting is that OpenAI blocked Hamilton from using its tools for Bitcoin security analysis around August 9. The team then switched to other AI systems, like Kimi K3. The bottom line: While AI can quickly find thousands of issues, getting maintainers to review and fix them is a separate challenge. This shows both the promise and the friction of using AI for security.