Coinbase, Binance Seek Anthropic's Mythos AI Amid $285M Hack Wave

Coinbase and Binance are in talks with Anthropic to gain access to Claude Mythos Preview, a restricted AI model capable of autonomously finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. The push, reported by The Information on April 15, 2026, follows the $285 million Drift Protocol hack and comes as crypto firms remain shut out of the model's initial rollout.

AI is changing crypto security faster than most realize. Subscribe to Web Snack for daily updates that cut through the noise.

Context

Anthropic launched Claude Mythos Preview on April 7 through Project Glasswing, a limited security initiative. During testing, the model found thousands of previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser, including a 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD. Anthropic called Mythos too dangerous for public release.

Founding Glasswing partners include AWS, Apple, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palo Alto Networks. Over 40 additional organizations that maintain critical software also received access, backed by $100 million in Anthropic compute credits. Crypto firms were not part of either group.

The exclusion stings. On April 1, North Korean hackers drained $285 million from Drift Protocol on Solana in just 12 minutes - the largest DeFi exploit of 2026. Weeks earlier, Kraken disclosed a criminal group was attempting to extort the exchange after unauthorized access to roughly 2,000 accounts. Crypto platforms sit on billions in digital assets with open-source codebases that are visible to anyone, including AI models.

Details

Coinbase CSO Philip Martin confirmed the exchange has been in close contact with Anthropic about Mythos. Binance CSO Jimmy Su said his team already uses a mix of commercially available LLMs, including earlier Anthropic models, alongside internally built tools for security testing. Fireblocks, a crypto custodian, reported that Claude Opus 4.6 had already surfaced vulnerabilities that no prior human audit had caught.

"The model will accelerate digital threats and defenses" - Philip Martin, Chief Security Officer at Coinbase

It's not just the big exchanges. Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams publicly asked on X for an Anthropic contact to test Mythos against his protocol. Uniswap holds more than $3 billion in locked assets. Some crypto executives expect the industry will receive access before Anthropic releases any broader version of the model, though nothing is confirmed.

Anthropic has also briefed senior U.S. government officials on Mythos. The Treasury Department's technology team is separately seeking access to hunt for vulnerabilities in its own systems, according to Bloomberg.

Impact

Crypto's open-source architecture makes it a natural target for AI-powered attacks. Smart contracts, browser wallets, and cross-chain bridges all run on publicly inspectable code. A model that found a bug hiding in OpenBSD for 27 years can do the same to a DeFi protocol holding hundreds of millions.

"Smart contracts have historically been audited by humans - slow, expensive, incomplete. An AI that can find a 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD can also find the reentrancy vulnerability that hasn't been caught yet in a major DeFi protocol" - Alex Svanevik, CEO at Nansen

The gap between who gets Mythos and who doesn't splits the industry into haves and have-nots. Large tech firms and banks are already scanning their systems. Smaller exchanges and DeFi teams without access risk falling behind - exactly the kind of targets that North Korean hackers chose with Drift.

Next Steps

Anthropic has no plans to release Mythos Preview publicly. The company intends to fold its capabilities into future Claude releases with stronger safeguards. Post-preview pricing is set at $25 per million input tokens and $125 per million output tokens.

For crypto, the timeline is unclear. No exchange or DeFi protocol has confirmed formal Glasswing partnership status. But the conversations are active, and the pressure is building from multiple directions - exchanges, DeFi protocols, and now the U.S. Treasury.

Meanwhile, the Drift investigation continues. On-chain evidence points to North Korean state actors, and most of the $285 million in stolen funds has already been bridged to Ethereum. Every week without broader Mythos access is another week where attackers may be working with similar tools - and defenders can't.

Don't miss what's moving crypto. Get Web Snack in your inbox every morning - free.

P.S. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Always conduct your own research and make independent decisions.