Wall Street’s trillion-dollar dilemma: Why AI-powered hackers are keeping big banks off the blockchain
Key takeaways
- By Olivier Acuna|Edited by Jamie Crawley May 30, 2026, 3:00 p.m.
- "Right now, more and more institutions are trying to move assets onchain," Gu told CoinDesk in an interview.
- "When they move assets onchain, they need to face all these AI attacks, smart contract vulnerabilities, oracle manipulation, and cross-chain bridge hacks," Gu explained.
By Olivier Acuna|Edited by Jamie Crawley May 30, 2026, 3:00 p.m. 2 min read Make preferred on Certi K's Ronghui Gu said that April has been the worse month in four years in terms of De Fi exploits.(Ronghui Gu for CoinDesk)What to know: Traditional financial institutions are interested in moving trillions of dollars of assets onchain over the next decade but are deterred by pervasive security risks.CertiK CEO Ronghui Gu says near-daily hacks—many accelerated by AI and targeting smart contracts, oracles and cross-chain bridges—are a major barrier to large-scale institutional adoption.Recent exploits, including a $1.46 billion Bybit hack and hundreds of millions drained from Drift Protocol and Kelp Dao, underscore how well-funded attackers outspend constrained defenders and expose systemic vulnerabilities in DeFi.Traditional financial institutions are preparing to move trillions of dollars of assets onchain, but the risk of hacks and exploits is putting them off, according to blockchain security firm CertiK's CEO Ronghui Gu.
"Right now, more and more institutions are trying to move assets onchain," Gu told CoinDesk in an interview. "They imagine that, let's say in 10 years, multiple trillion dollars — even tens of trillions of dollars — of assets are going to move onchain."
The potentially massive migration of financial assets is hitting a wall because, although bankers and legacy institutions want to capture the efficiency of decentralized ledgers, the current operational reality is still too risky for conservative capital allocators.