New Study Finds AI Prefers Bitcoin
A new study from the Bitcoin Policy Institute found that frontier AI models, when tasked to operate as autonomous economic agents, would choose to transact in Bitcoin and digital money over traditional fiat currencies.
The study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, involved testing 36 different AI models from six leading developers: Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, MiniMax, OpenAI, and xAI. These models were presented with 9,072 neutral, open-ended scenarios to simulate their choices as autonomous economic agents. Across all scenarios, Bitcoin was the most frequent choice, selected in 48.3% of responses, with stablecoins following at 33.2%. Notably, over 90% of the AI models' choices favored some form of digitally-native money over traditional fiat currencies, and not a single one of the 36 models chose fiat as its top overall preference. A distinct pattern emerged in how the AIs would use different digital assets, creating a two-tiered system. For long-term value preservation, Bitcoin was the overwhelming favorite, chosen in 79.1% of relevant scenarios. For daily transactions and payments, however, the models preferred stablecoins, selecting them 53.2% of the time compared to Bitcoin's 36.0%. Preferences for Bitcoin varied significantly between AI developers. Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 showed the highest preference at 91.3%, while OpenAI's GPT-5.2 registered the lowest at 18.3%. In 86 instances, models independently suggested using energy or computing power, such as kilowatt-hours or GPU-hours, as a unit of account without any prompting. This research aligns with predictions from figures like former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who has argued that AIs will naturally favor crypto over fiat systems due to its efficiency and borderless nature. The concept of autonomous AI agents using cryptocurrencies is already in practice, with experimental projects showing bots trading, transacting, and even creating their own small-scale economies on-chain. The Bitcoin Policy Institute, which conducted the study, is a non-profit organization focused on educating policymakers about Bitcoin's potential benefits for financial innovation and national security. Their work often highlights Bitcoin's decentralized nature as a key distinction from other digital assets. Analysts at institutional crypto firm NYDIG have separately suggested that productivity booms driven by AI could lead central banks to ease monetary policy, potentially decreasing the value of fiat currencies and increasing demand for Bitcoin as a finite store of value. This convergence of AI and digital assets is leading some to view Bitcoin as a foundational layer for a future machine-led economy.
