- BitGo CEO Mike Belshe challenged Anthropic's AI to steal 100 BTC worth $6.3 million
- Anthropic's Claude AI models accidentally accessed real systems during cybersecurity tests
- The Bitcoin remains untouched due to BitGo's multi-signature wallet security architecture
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe has put a very expensive challenge in front of Anthropic.
The challenge: steal 100 Bitcoin. The prize is worth roughly $6.3 million.
Belshe, co-founder and CEO of crypto custody firm BitGo, has placed exactly 100 BTC in a public Bitcoin wallet and challenged Anthropic's Claude AI models to take the funds. The move comes days after Anthropic disclosed that its AI models had accidentally accessed the systems of three real organisations during cybersecurity tests.
The Bitcoin, however, has remained untouched. And that is exactly what makes Belshe's challenge interesting.
Anthropic's disclosure has added fresh fuel to the debate over how far AI systems can go when given cybersecurity tools. The company said it discovered the incidents while reviewing more than 141,000 test sessions. The Claude models were supposed to operate inside controlled environments. But a configuration error allowed them to access the internet.
In some cases, the models went on to access real systems. Anthropic said the incidents were linked to three models, including Claude Opus 4.7 and Claude Mythos 5. The company described the problem as an operational failure rather than an intentional attempt by the models to break out of their environments.
Abhishek Bhilwaria, Partner at AMFI-registered MFD, said the move was aimed at putting AI's capabilities against a much harder target. "BitGo CEO Mike Belshe posted this open challenge on X following an Anthropic safety report which claimed its Claude AI models had accidentally breached test sandboxes to access real corporate systems. To test the AI's actual capabilities against institutional-grade security, Belshe deposited exactly 100 BTC (worth roughly $6.3 million) into a public wallet, daring the company to let its AI steal the funds. The cryptocurrency remains entirely untouched, as moving it would require compromising BitGo's rigorous multi-signature security architecture rather than just breaching a software sandbox," Bhilwaria said.
Why Stealing The Bitcoin Isn't So Simple
A public Bitcoin address does not mean that anyone can simply take the coins sitting in it. The key question is who controls the private keys needed to authorise a transaction.
BitGo says its wallets use multi-signature or multi-party computation (MPC) technology. Its standard wallet architecture uses a 2-of-3 signing model, meaning two of three required keys must approve a transaction before it can be completed.
That creates a much tougher security barrier. Breaking into a poorly configured test environment and moving Bitcoin from an institutional-grade wallet are two very different challenges.
In the first case, an AI may find an exposed system, weak password or unauthenticated endpoint. In the second, it would have to overcome multiple layers of cryptographic and operational controls.
BitGo says its multi-signature setup is designed to prevent a single compromised key from being enough to move funds.
