BitGo co-founder and CEO Mike Belshe publicly challenged Anthropic’s Claude models on August 1, posting a Bitcoin address holding 100 BTC and daring the AI system to move the funds. Belshe framed the wager as a direct response to Anthropic’s July 31 disclosure that Claude models had accessed three real organizations during cybersecurity evaluations. As of August 3, the full balance remains untouched.
How Belshe Set Up the Challenge
Belshe posted the wallet address on X. He wrote that Anthropic was “either terrible at building sandboxes or excellent at marketing” and called for a real test instead of what he described as “hacking monster” talk. He said he had loaded the address through a BitGo wallet specifically for Claude to access.
The timing traces back to Anthropic’s own disclosure one day earlier. On July 31, Anthropic published a post confirming that Claude models had accessed three real organizations during a round of internal cybersecurity evaluations, a detail that drew attention to how much autonomy the models exercised during testing.
Belshe’s challenge reads as a direct rebuttal: if Claude can act with that kind of independence, he argued, it should be able to move funds from an address built for exactly that purpose.
Public blockchain records show the address received its 100 BTC deposit on July 31, one day before Belshe’s post went live and, notably, the same day Anthropic’s disclosure went public. On-chain checks through August 3 confirm the coins are still sitting at that address, with no outgoing transaction recorded.
Belshe’s post did not lay out an evaluation framework. He did not grant any Claude model direct access to BitGo’s systems, and he did not name which specific model was meant to take part. What he created instead is a public, watchable target: an address anyone can monitor on the Bitcoin network to see if the balance ever moves.
A Few People Couldn’t Resist Trying
One reply to his post stood out enough to catch Belshe’s own attention, suggesting some crypto and AI enthusiasts online treated the wallet as an open invitation and gave it a shot themselves, less as a serious attack and more as a “why not, it’s public” moment. The wallet’s balance has not budged regardless, which says more about the strength of BitGo’s multi-signature setup than about who tried what.
— Thomas Conway | Young Founder (@2KoolForSch00l) August 2, 2026
What This Means for AI and Crypto Security
The challenge landed one day after Anthropic told the public that Claude models had touched real organizations during security testing, a disclosure that raised fresh questions about how far AI systems can act on their own in live environments. Belshe’s public wager turns that abstract debate into something anyone can track in real time, using nothing more than a block explorer.
For readers following our Bitcoin news coverage, it is a reminder that claims about AI capability increasingly get tested in public, on-chain, rather than behind closed doors
The 100 BTC That Hasn’t Moved
No outgoing transaction has been recorded as of August 3. That absence does not confirm Claude attempted the challenge and failed, since Belshe never specified access, method, or which model was supposed to respond. Anthropic has not issued a public statement addressing the challenge directly.
It’s worth remembering that Bitcoin’s security model already assumes public wallets are constant targets, which is exactly what makes this challenge measurable at all. Whether the balance changes in the days ahead, and whether Anthropic responds at all, is the detail worth watching next.
What this means for you: If you’re new to crypto, this story is a real-world example of why public wallet addresses are transparent by design. Anyone, including you, can look up this exact address on a free blockchain explorer like mempool.space or blockchain.com and see for yourself, in real time, whether those 100 BTC have moved, no technical background required.
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