OpenAI blocks researcher Rob Hamilton from Bitcoin security analysis, pushing team toward Chinese AI models

Rob Hamilton was in the middle of something genuinely useful. The AnchorWatch CEO had assembled a volunteer “Bitcoin Red Team” to run AI-powered security audits on open-source Bitcoin repositories, and the results were piling up fast. Then OpenAI pulled the plug. On August 9, 2026, Hamilton publicly disclosed that OpenAI’s “trust cyber program” had blocked him from continuing his analysis on a codebase that had already been responsibly disclosed. This happened despite Hamilton having completed the platform’s onboarding and KYC processes. The fix was straightforward, if ironic: he switched to Chinese open-source models. What the Red Team actually found The Bitcoin Red Team wasn’t a vanity project. It was a direct response to a serious incident: a late-July 2026 vulnerability disclosure involving Coldcard hardware wallets that exposed a flaw leading to the theft of more than 1,000 BTC. Hamilton, alongside developer Calle and roughly 16 other volunteers, decided to take a systematic approach. Using cutting-edge AI models, the team set out to scan as many open-source Bitcoin-related repositories as they could, as quickly as possible. The pace was remarkable. In the first 30 hours alone...