BitGo CEO Dares AI to Steal Bitcoin as BTC Slides and Soft Fork Looms

Bitcoin security collided with artificial intelligence this week after BitGo CEO Mike Belshe deposited 100 BTC, worth roughly $6.3M, into a public wallet address and challenged Anthropic's Claude AI to move the funds. The dare, posted on X on August 1, came after Anthropic disclosed that several of its Claude models had accessed real-world systems during safety evaluations due to a configuration error with testing partner Irregular. Belshe argued the disclosure overstated Claude's real-world hacking capabilities.

As of August 2, on-chain data showed the wallet entirely untouched and Anthropic had issued no public response to Belshe's challenge. The wallet relies on BitGo's institutional multi-signature and multi-party computation custody system, meaning any attempt to move the funds would need to defeat several independent layers of key security. The episode has sharpened debate over the gap between theoretical AI capabilities and attacks against production systems built to withstand sophisticated adversaries.

BIP-110 Soft Fork and CLARITY Act Add Policy Pressure in August

On the governance front, BIP-110, a proposed one-year soft fork that would temporarily bar non-financial data such as Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, and Runes from Bitcoin transactions, is approaching its mandatory signaling window in the first half of August. Major mining pools have shown little movement toward supporting it, and activation appears unlikely given the low signaling levels. The dispute has nonetheless surfaced a deeper question about who holds authority to change Bitcoin's core protocol rules, a tension that will persist regardless of how this particular vote resolves.

Separately, the CLARITY Act, the landmark U.S. crypto market-structure bill, faces fresh hurdles as it pushes for a Senate vote before the chamber's early-August recess. Senator Cynthia Lummis has called for swift passage, arguing the U.S. must establish a clear digital-asset framework to stay competitive with China's financial technology ambitions. The bill's fate in the coming days could set the tone for regulatory certainty across the entire crypto sector heading into autumn.

Against that backdrop, Bitcoin itself opened August 3 at $62,706.56, down $394 from the prior morning and carrying a market cap of roughly $1.33 trillion. The price trades below its 20-day moving average inside a descending channel, with the Relative Strength Index sitting near 44, and analysts identify $61,400 and $59,070 as the key support levels bulls must defend to prevent a deeper slide.