Crypto exchange Bybit says AI can play defense, too

Crypto exchange Bybit's AI-assisted security systems blocked more than 30,000 suspicious withdrawal attempts between Jan. 1 and June 15, sparing roughly 20,000 users from what the exchange puts at over $700 million in potential losses, CoinDesk's Shaurya Malwa reported.

The same tooling flagged about $212 million in fraud-linked funds and blacklisted more than 10,000 addresses. Initial reviews of flagged withdrawals averaged 4.7 minutes.

Automated scans of 1,489 public-facing assets surfaced over 100 high-severity flaws, Bybit said, and assessments that once took about two weeks now take two hours.

"The cybersecurity arms race has entered an era of minutes," said David Zong, Bybit's head of group risk control and security.

The figures can't be independently verified, CoinDesk noted. Bybit lost about $1.46 billion to North Korea's Lazarus Group in February 2025, the largest theft in crypto history.

The DeAI takeaway: The pitch cuts against the prevailing story about AI and security, in which the model is the attacker's edge.