What Bitcoin Did · Nov 12, 2026 · 2h 32m · 144m saved
With Michael Dunworth, Founder and former CEO of Wyre
Michael Dunworth, founder and former CEO of the crypto payments company Wyre, has a standing bet of one Bitcoin that RSA encryption breaks within ten years, and half a Bitcoin that it breaks within five, on What Bitcoin Did.
Most Bitcoin security talk still treats the code as the weak point. Michael argues the bigger risk is already-stolen data sitting in encrypted form today, waiting for the math that currently protects it to fail.
"They want two things. They want energy and they want data. And the machines will get both of them no matter what we say." — Michael Dunworth
Michael built Wyre into a payments company that moved roughly $25 billion for about a million users, by his account with zero hacks, DDoS incidents or nation-state breaches — a record he says most Bitcoin businesses don't match on customer data.
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The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 2 hours 32 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 7 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Michael has a standing bet of one Bitcoin that RSA breaks within 10 years, half a Bitcoin within 5
AI works as a "translator" that compresses years of specialized math into instant understanding, for attackers as well as builders
He estimates 90-95% of the world's data sits encrypted, and hackers already stockpile stolen databases to crack later
Bitcoin exchanges are bearer-asset targets with no recourse, which is why disciplined "black hat startups" go after them
Banks like Westpac cap crypto deposits over fraud-team capacity, not anti-Bitcoin bias, he says
Wyre moved $25 billion for about a million users with zero hacks, a record he says most Bitcoin firms don't match on customer data
Bitcoin's developer community has fractured, and he says talent leaving the room is a bigger threat than any single technical dispute
He thinks AI may eventually treat GPUs and RAM as a currency, which he calls a bigger long-run competitor to Bitcoin than Ethereum
1. A Bet on Broken Math
Michael opened with the wager itself: a standing offer to a Harvard-affiliated a16z crypto professor.
Michael is betting a Bitcoin that RSA breaks within a decade
"I will bet you one Bitcoin that RSA is broken in 10 years and I'll bet you half a Bitcoin that it's broken in 5 years. That's the level of conviction I have." — Michael Dunworth
He grounds the bet in how little humanity understands about prime numbers, which he calls "the indivisible unit of the universe" underpinning RSA's security — it isn't that the math is unbreakable, only that nobody has broken it yet. He points to the largest-ever RSA factorization record, broken roughly two months before the taping using about 600,000 GPU-hours, as evidence the timeline is already moving.
"We just didn't budget for AI to come into the conversation as strong as it was." — Michael Dunworth
