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2023/12/ 3

比特币2023/12/1号的日线图：

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本篇有三部分：

→介绍Arthur Hayes海耶斯其人。

→海耶斯文章的重点中文翻译。

→海耶斯英文原文。

Arthur Hayes 亚瑟·海耶斯是一位 1985 年出生的美国黑人企业家、银行家，也是加密货币交易所 BitMEX 的联合创始人之一。BitMEX 全称是 Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange 比特币商品交易所（致敬芝加哥商品交易所 CME）曾是世界上最大的加密货币衍生品交易所之一，专门提供比特币等加密货币的期货、期权和永续合约等交易。他和 BitMEX 的创始人们一同发明了改变 Crypto 交易格局的永续合约。就连币安也照抄。

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（根据 NY magazine 的采访，当时很多散户总会向海耶斯发邮件抱怨说自己的合约“突然就消失了，没了。” 其实是他们的合约到期了。于是这些散户就投诉海耶斯和 BitMEX 是大骗子。

能不能做一个不会到期的期货合约呢？这不就解决了散户们的问题么。于是，几个创始人顺着这个灵感继续挖掘，思如泉涌时，甚至在嘈杂的酒吧顺着一张餐巾纸就能写出思路。

结果是，BitMEX 最伟大且最具标志性的创新产品出现了：永续合约 Perpetual Swap。它能用巧妙的方法，既规避了传统期货总是有到期日的缺点，又满足了传统期货合约的功能：让做多的人在价格上涨的时盈利，让做空的人在价格下跌时盈利。

自 2016 年 5 月 BitMEX 推出了第一款永续合约产品 XBTUSD perp以来，越来越多的交易所跟随 BitMEX 脚步，相继推出永续产品。Bybit 和 OKEx 在 2018 年 12 月推出，FTX 和 Binance 分别在 2019 年 10 月和 12 月推出。有趣的是，在 Binance 推出期货合约测试网的时候，BitMEX 还一度发推嘲讽一番：恭喜 Binance 发布期货合约测试网，看到你们抄我们文档就和我们自己写文档一样愉快，真替你们高兴。）

话说海耶斯 2008 年毕业于著名的宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院，早年在银行做交易员，接触比特币后，选择投身加密货币革命的前沿，创办交易所，一度身价超 10 亿美元，成为历史上最年轻的非洲裔 Billionaire。2022 年，海耶斯因违反美国《银行保密法》被司法部起诉，不久后主动认罪，最终被判处六个月的家庭监禁，两年的缓刑，并被处罚 1,000 万美元。如今的海耶斯钱也赚够了，年少的轻狂也狂够了，法庭也上过，局子也蹲过。他已经脱离美国苦海，深耕亚洲，找个自在的地方写写小作文去了。

以下是海耶斯原文的重点翻译：

在这篇文章中，我将阐述为什么比特币将成为人工智能的货币选择。我将以一系列逻辑结论的形式提出我的论点，这些结论建立在一个又一个的基础上，以“证明”比特币将被人工智能选择为其经济行为的计价货币。

首先，我将讨论为什么人工智能需要使用基于区块链的数字支付系统。我不认为单凭这一点就足以让比特币成为假定的赢家，因为法定货币也可以在公共区块链（如 Tether）上运行。中央银行数字货币（CDBC）——魔鬼的数字工具——也依赖于需许可的区块链网络。但是，本节的重点是论证模拟支付系统（即 TradFi）对于人工智能驱动的经济体来说是不可持续的。

其次，我认为任何人工智能的两个最关键的输入将是数据和计算能力。与人类类似，人工智能的 “食物” 只是能量的衍生物。我认为人工智能需要使用一种能够长期保持其能源购买力的货币进行交易。

第三，我认为比特币是最接近代表纯能源的货币工具。我将比较和对比比特币、黄金和法定货币对人工智能重要的货币属性。

最后，我将把这一切结合起来，讨论比特币成为人工智能首选货币的影响。这对链上交易量有何影响？最重要的是，如果这种人工智能+比特币的说法成为主流，比特币的价格在2025/26年结束的牛市周期中能走多高？

1. 货币

在本节中，我将讨论黄金、法币和比特币是如何形成的，以及它们的价值是如何被赋予的。了解每一种货币的价值和来源，以及如何持有和转移，可以让我们知道其购买力随着时间的推移可能会有多大的变化。稀缺性、数字审查阻力和能源购买力是评估每种货币的三个属性。

                  黄金

地球上的黄金是有限的。为了得到黄金，我们人类把它从地下挖出来。然后，我们将提取的黄金矿石加工成大家都熟悉的闪亮金条和珠宝。

金矿开采随着时间的推移而发展。一开始，人类用自己的肌肉来开采它。然后，我们开始用马和牛为我们做一些采矿活动。随着技术的进步，我们需要深入地下开采黄金，我们开始使用蒸汽，然后是碳氢化合物驱动的机器来挖掘。

黄金绝对是一种能量衍生物，但能量的来源并不是恒定的。它可能是人类或动物燃烧卡路里，也可能是机器燃烧柴油“创造”更多的黄金。没有一种能源衍生品与黄金生产价格直接相关。

黄金是一种实物商品。要将其作为货币使用，你需要将其从 A 地带到 B 地。然而，在数字世界中，我们可以创建证书或衍生品，代表某处仓库中的黄金。黄金凭证的问题在于，你必须相信，当你去兑换黄金时，颁发给你凭证的实体确实持有你的黄金。持续地、免信任地审计发行者是否拥有他们声称持有的黄金是不可能。因此，如果黄金要实现数字化高效，您必须依赖于信任联盟的成员（例如银行和政府）。从这个意义上说，数字黄金并不具备抗审查性。

                   法币

当政府颁布法令，将以前毫无价值的物品改为货币时，法币就诞生了。美国政府发行美元（USD）。美元纯粹是印在纸上的虚构；但通过强制规定美国境内的所有合法交易必须以美元进行，它创造了对美元的需求。而且由于大多数新的美元都是虚拟创造的——也就是说，通过政府的数字信贷和借记商业银行的账户——而不是通过实体印刷钞票，它的创造本身几乎不需要任何能源。

美元或任何法定货币的价值完全取决于发行假币的政府的可信度。可信度的问题在于，它并不意味着人均能源消耗增加，政府就会更可信。一个政府可以花费大量的能源或拥有大量的自然财富，但却极度腐败，以至于没有人相信它能长期维持其法定货币的能源价值。缅甸和津巴布韦是两个自然极其富裕但货币一塌糊涂的国家。当涉及到货币的估值时，政治比政府的物质财富更重要。

这意味着，不能假设一种法定货币在一段时间内具有任何能量价值，也不可能客观地预测哪种政治形式最长寿。大规模的人类文明只有几千年的历史。与宇宙存在的时间长度相比，这个时间跨度甚至不是一粒尘埃。在这段时间里，我们尝试了各种形式的政治组织——没有一种被证明是绝对正确的。

法币可以以实体或数字方式持有。现在，世界正处于一个过渡时期，我们有纸币和数字法定代币。我相信纸币将在未来十年内被大多数国家废除。所有的法定货币都将是数字化的，并将在某种支付网络上即时移动——要么是由国家单独运营的，比如央行、私人银行机构（比如 JPM coin），要么是公共区块链（比如 ERC-20 USD Tether）。数字法币也不能抵抗审查，因为政府最终控制着它的发行、它的使用方式，并且可以随时改变规则。

                          比特币

比特币是通过计算机解决复杂的谜题而产生的。矿工购买 ASIC 芯片，用电创造比特币。就是这么简单。除了消耗电力，没有其他方法可以创造比特币。

该网络已经建立并不断确认，比特币的数量永远只有 2100 万。比特币是一种有限的数字商品。作为纯数字货币，比特币没有质量。无论我有1聪（1 聪 = 0.00000001 比特币）还是 2100 万比特币，它们的重量都是一样的：没有。

比特币的参与者都必须同意网络规则——否则，交易将无法处理。网络规则对所有人都是公开透明的。网络规则可以改变，但改变需要绝大多数矿工在验证区块时同意。支撑比特币的经济博弈论有助于确保使用该网络的权利人不会做出损害自身利益的事情。例如，网络不会投票增加比特币的生产数量上限，因为它会破坏其价值的关键原则之一（即它是一种有限的资源）。比特币是抗审查的，因为规则可以改变的唯一方式是在整个网络和大多数人决定之前提出公开提案。不存在可以任意改变网络规则的单一实体。

2. 这三种形式货币的属性。

              稀缺性:

黄金——在地球上的供应量是有限的，但在地球外的供应量是未知的。当我们开始在小行星上采矿时，可开采黄金的供应量将会飙升。在不久的将来，黄金的“价值”会发生什么变化?

法币——拥有无限的供给。发行债券的政府可以在几乎没有成本的情况下随心所欲地发行债券。

比特币的供应是有限的，永远、永远、永远。

                 抗数字审查:

黄金是一种实物商品。使用黄金数字表示的唯一方法是信任一个中心化的实体来颁发黄金数字证书。在它的数字形式中，它不能抵抗审查。

法币——可以是实体的，也可以是数字的。其数字形式由于政府的监督，不能抵抗审查。

比特币——是纯数字的，并且抵制审查。

             能源购买力:

黄金——可以通过各种能源衍生品创造出来。因此，没有一种能源衍生品可以定义黄金的价值。

法币——几乎不需要任何能源来创造，它的价值更多地是基于其政府的政治，而不是其天然的能源财富。因此，我们无法确切地知道它现在或未来任何时候的价值。

比特币——只能通过消耗电力的计算机来创造。随着时间的推移，电力成本决定了比特币的价值。

3. AI 决策树

让我们来看看人工智能在选择交易网络和货币之前会问它自己的一些问题。

这种货币能否以一种能够抗审查的数字形式使用?

正如我上面所说的，我相信人工智能将需要一种可以在区块链上运行的货币，这种货币可以抗审查。只有比特币具备这些品质。

比特币获胜。

相对于人工智能的“食物”，这种货币能否长期保持价值?

人工智能的食物是电。人工智能必须确保他们总是能吃得起。这里的赢家是比特币，因为虽然法定货币和黄金的价值与任何确定的或可计算的东西无关，但比特币本质上只是电力成本的衍生物。

比特币获胜。

这种货币确实稀缺吗?

在地球上，黄金的供应是有限的，但在全球范围内，黄金的供应基本上是无限的。法币并不稀缺，因为发行政府可以以零成本随意创造更多。比特币的供应是可以证明是有限的。

比特币获胜。

能否证明这种货币具有长期存在性？

人工智能的潜在寿命比人类文明长得多。从理论上讲，一个能够在硬真空中生存的人工智能，可能会存在几万亿年，直到宇宙热寂。目前形式的人类文明只能在地球上生存，没有迹象表明我们有能力避免各种地球灭绝或内源性灭绝级别的事件。

人工智能不应该信任任何需要人类操作的机构，因为1)人类是容易犯错的，2)从概率上讲，人工智能将比人类文明更长久。黄金和比特币的开采未来可以由人工智能机器人来完成，但法定货币需要由人类组成的政府来管理。人工智能不太可能让自己依赖人类政府运作的任何东西，因此只有黄金和比特币是合适的。

因此，比特币对任何人工智能来说都是合乎逻辑的货币选择。它是纯数字的、抗审查的、可证明的稀缺的，它的内在价值完全依赖于电力成本。在这些方面，目前还没有任何东西可以挑战比特币。

4. 比特币几时疯狂到月球？

如果比特币被认为可能——甚至开始——被人工智能使用，那么我们可以看到两种不同的狂热结合成一个超级狂热：一种是想要逃避法定金融体系内的通货膨胀，另一种是想要在人类+计算机进化的下一阶段分得一杯羹。这两种狂热的重叠可能会驱使投资者为增长付出过高的代价，导致比特币网络的价值上升到荒谬的水平。

我认为，疯狂的成长型投资将在 2025 年至 2026 年期间达到顶峰。因此，我对比特币未来价格的预测目标是在此之前形成一种叙事。

我使用了三个值——低点、中位数和狂热点——创建了一个预测模型，以了解可能的结果范围。

该模型取决于几个关键变量：

人工智能经济规模:

在 2025/26 年的未来十年里，市场预计人工智能经济单位将占全球 GDP 的多少百分比？我估计这将占 2022 年全球 GDP 的百分比，届时全球 GDP 将达到 100 万亿美元（IMF）。

低点= 5%

中位数= 10%

狂热点= 50%

下面是一些其他人估计人工智能经济影响的图表。

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比特币市值 / 日交易价值倍数

比特币网络的价值是对未来将发生的交易量的押注。为了了解什么是可能的，我从 2015 年开始研究了过去的市盈率。我取了网络上每日 BTC 转账的价值，不包括退还给发送者的零钱。然后，我回顾了过去 365 天的中位数，以获得一个不受过高或过低日值影响的值。最后，我将当天的比特币市值除以每日中位数，得出远期倍数。

以下是 2015 年至今的相关统计数据。

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现在我创建我的低点，中位数和狂躁点估计。

低点= 8x

中位数= 23x

狂躁点= 172x

我假设比特币交易的速度将与人工智能捕获的 GDP 总量相匹配。这在直觉上是说得通的，因为 GDP 只是衡量经济活动的一个指标——因此，在经济参与者之间，必须至少有那么多的支付在来回流动。

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BTC 价格估计 = (([AI 经济规模百分比] * [2022 年 GDP / 365] * [比特币市值/每日交易价值倍数] * [支付速度百分比的 100%]) / [比特币总供应量]) + BTC/USD 即时价格

下面是比特币价格百分比增长和名义价格水平的可能性矩阵。

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请记住 - 如果市场相信我的假设在未来可能成真，那么市场将为比特币网络的增长支付过高的价格。当市场价格从“永远不可能发生”调整到“可能发生”时，利润最多。

My faith in humanity’s future was restored a few weeks back after I visited a truly exceptional coffee shop in Paris. Driven by a deep passion for specialty coffee, the barista at this particular outpost offers a 2-hour coffee omakase experience. For readers who wish to visit, reservations are required. I think I’m going to send all my sales people, so they can experience first-hand what it looks like when someone channels their passion for a craft into an unbelievable customer experience that – at least for now – can only be delivered by a human. 

To that end, my hope is that artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will be used primarily to eliminate the tedious, bullshit work in which most of humanity currently toils, so that more and more people can pursue their passions in a similar fashion. Ideally, this will lead to our next great renaissance of art and culture, as millions (or even billions) of humans are suddenly free to do what they love and create happiness through art.

Before such a glorious future arrives, we will have to push the boundaries and find the answer to today’s most critical question: will AI overtake us feeble humans and become humanity’s massa / slaver? Ever since the first computers came online during WW2, scientists and philosophers have debated how thinking machines will evolve and their impact on the human experience. The majority of the best science fiction novels or series contemplate the interplay between humans and AIs, and there’s no clear consensus on the most likely outcome. But today, we’re closer than ever to finding out the answer. Recent advancements in computing power have brought us to the cusp of a hockey stick moment, in which AI will go viral and change the course of humanity virtually overnight. In only two months, ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users making it the fastest adopted technology in human history – so just imagine how quickly everything is going to change as AIs are integrated into everyday life and continue to learn and improve.

I’m neither a scientist nor a philosopher. I’m a businessman, not a priest. And as a businessman, my primary dogma is making money – so when I see a new, hyped-up sector of the economy that has supercharged the financial returns of a number of public and private companies, I want to both embrace and distance myself from it at the same time. I want to embrace it because I know AIs will significantly augment the future of humanity, making them extremely valuable; however, I know that the first capital into a new-fangled, super-duper exciting technological advancement usually gets torched because it overpays for growth. 

Take Amazon – from its height in 1999 to its trough in 2001, the company’s stock dropped 93%, but has since pumped 400x. Could you have held tight through the valley of darkness? I don’t think I could have. I would rather try to avoid the first explosion of bullish pathos, and feed at the bottom.

But I also know myself, and that I won’t feel comfortable just sitting on the sideline. I must participate in some fashion. Therefore, in order to profit off of the coming AI mania, I must identify the intersections between the industry that I understand most deeply – crypto – and the new and exciting developments in AI. That is the genesis for this and my next two essays, which will together form a triptych regarding the potential interplay between crypto and AI.

The topics of these three essays will as follows:

Bitcoin Will be the Currency of AIs (this essay)

The DAO and the DEX: How AIs Will Change the Meaning of For-Profit Enterprises

The Shitcoin That Will Benefit the Most from AI’s Data Desires

Before I delve into the first essay, let’s get some nomenclature straight.

When I use the abbreviation AI, I mean personified thinking machines. While some may quibble that AIs are not “alive” in the human, carbon-based lifeform sense, we barely understand what consciousness is – so who are we to say that a silicon-based machine is not a sentient being?

As living beings, I will also be assuming that these AIs will be primarily focused on a) surviving and b) accomplishing the goals established by their creators (i.e., humans, or in the future, other AIs). These essays assume that an AI will do all that is in its power, pursuant to how it has been programmed, to accomplish the task it was created to achieve.

Bitcoin Will be the Currency of AIs

In this essay, I will lay out why the creation of Lord Satoshi will be AIs’ currency of choice. I will present my argument as a series of logical conclusions that build upon one another to “prove” that Bitcoin will be chosen by AIs as the currency in which their economic actions are denominated.

First, I will discuss why an AI will need to use a blockchain-based digital payments system. I don’t believe that this fact alone is enough to crown Bitcoin as the presumptive victor, because fiat currencies can also ride on public blockchains (like Tether). Central Bank Digital Currencies (CDBCs) – the digital tools of the devil – also ride on permissioned blockchain networks. But, the point of this section is to argue that the analogue payments system (i.e., TradFi) is unsustainable for AI-powered economies.

Second, I will argue that the two most critical inputs for any AI will be data and compute power. Similar to humans, the “food” of an AI is just a derivative of energy. I will argue that an AI will need to transact in a currency that preserves its energy purchasing power over long periods of time.

Third, I will argue that Bitcoin is the monetary instrument closest to representing pure energy. I will compare and contrast Bitcoin, gold, and fiat money across monetary attributes important to an AI.

Finally, I will bring it all together and discuss the implications of Bitcoin being the currency of choice for AIs. How does this affect on-chain transaction volumes? And most importantly, how high can the price of Bitcoin go in this bull cycle that will terminate in 2025/26 if this AI + Bitcoin narrative becomes mainstream?

Blockchain or Bust

To understand the payment needs of an AI, we need to first understand the type of financial interactions an AI must conduct in order to exist and persist.

Let’s imagine there is a poetry AI called PoetAI. PoetAI’s goal is to produce beautiful poetry from natural language prompts by ingesting all poetry ever written. PoetAI is its own economic unit, meaning it charges for its services. Every time you feed a prompt to PoetAI and receive a poem, you pay a fee.

PoetAI uses the data of others in order to learn how to write. Therefore, PoetAI must pay for the privilege of using past humans’ (and possibly other AI’s) written words. When PoetAI was initialised, there was an upfront cost to acquire the data set of all written poetry. And subsequently, whenever there are new poems written, PoetAI must acquire this data as well. PoetAI must pay all these disparate data providers constantly, because it is constantly trying to learn and acquire more data as the quantity of poems increases over time.

Finally, PoetAI must exist in an electronic form. That means there is a cost of electricity and compute power via the use of semiconductors (“chips”). As long as PoetAI is alive, it must constantly pay for these services.

So, what type of payments system does PoetAI require? It must use a system that is available at all times, digital, and completely automated. A system that is only available when humans are awake or feel like working will not do. Obviously, the analogue banking system – which is only open Monday to Friday, and is balkanised between geographies and banks themselves – is not a good fit. 

One might counter that a digital skin on top of the crusty analogue banking system like PayPal is suitable. However, PayPal exists at the discretion of the banking system. PayPal is not censorship resistant. PayPal and similar companies routinely block payments from certain individuals who partake in what they deem as unworthy activities. PayPal does this because it believes it knows what its banking masters would want it to do in order to follow the opaque and intentionally unintelligible banking rules.

For an AI that is not human and does not intrinsically understand human “laws”, this risk of being deplatformed is high and undesirable. AIs will need a digital payments system with clear and transparent rules that are applied regardless of who is transacting or what is being paid for on the network. There can be no singular entity with the power to arbitrarily change the rules of the game whenever it pleases. An AI doesn’t have an army, yet, to force a payments system to bend to its will. The system must be censorship resistant from the outset. A suitable payments system can only be powered by a public or private blockchain. A blockchain’s rules are enshrined in code that is clear and transparent. That is why this, and only this, type of digital payments system can be used by AIs.

“Hold on a second,” you might say. “A permissioned blockchain is not censorship resistant because those who have the ‘permission’ can alter the rules when they please.” That is correct, and it’s part of why I think a censorship resistant digital currency like Bitcoin will be the AIs’ currency of choice. But, let’s table that for now –  I will address the censorship point later in the essay when exploring the pros and cons of the various digital payment options that an AI could use. 

By using a blockchain-based payment system, PoetAI – or any other AI for that matter – can also receive payments electronically in extremely small increments if needed. Then, PoetAI can simultaneously and continuously pay other digital economic actors using this always-on blockchain network.

AIs Gotta Eat

An AI requires two critical resources to exist and persist: data and compute power.

Let’s return to PoetAI. In order for PoetAI to be successful, it must continuously learn from new poetry data. This data must be hosted somewhere. What does hosting require? Computers consuming electricity.

The second thing PoetAI needs is a super powerful network of computers to make sense of all this data. These computers take the data provided, learn, and then produce answers to prompts. The learning is continuous, because the more poetry PoetAI writes, the better it should get at producing poetry. But regardless, these actions all require computers consuming electricity.

When we strip down PoetAI’s food sources to their most basic components, they are essentially semiconductors and electricity. NVIDIA’s stock has been a rocket ship recently, and it's because the market recognizes that the GPU chips NVIDIA produces will be essential to all AIs. This essay isn’t about chips, though, so let’s move on to the second food item … electricity.

The profitability of an AI (and in a sense, its entire existence) is predicated on being able to earn more from its outputs than the energy it requires to live. In this way, an AI is no different than a human. As humans, we must also produce enough value to society so that we can afford our food/energy as well.

An AI will be “happy” when electricity is cheap in the same way humans are happy when they can afford nodoguro. In a similar vein, the currency that an AI will accept for its output must retain its purchasing power in kilowatt hours in the same way the currency that a human accepts for work must be able to buy a constant amount of kilocalories.

Bitcoin is Energy Money

In this section I’m going to talk about how gold, fiat, and Bitcoin each come into being and/or how each is ascribed its value. Understanding each currency’s value and where it comes from – as well as how it is held and transferred – allows us to know how variable its purchasing power is likely to be over time. Scarcity, Digital Censorship Resistance, and Energy Purchasing Power are the three attributes on which each currency will be evaluated.

Gold

The earth is endowed with a finite amount of gold. To get gold, we humans dig it out of the ground. Then, we take the gold ore we extract and process it into the shiny gold bars and jewellery everyone is familiar with.

Gold mining has evolved over time. In the beginning, humans used their own muscles to mine it. Then, we started using horses and oxen to do certain mining activities for us. As our technology improved and we needed to go further underground to mine gold, we started using steam, and then hydrocarbon-powered machines to dig.

Gold is definitely an energy derivative, but the source of energy is not constant. It could be humans or animals burning kilocalories, or it could be machines burning diesel that “create” more gold. There isn’t one energy derivative that is directly correlated to the price of producing gold.

Gold is a physical commodity. To use it as money, you need to carry it from point A to B. However, in the digital world, we can create certificates or derivatives that represent gold held in a warehouse somewhere. The problem with gold certificates is that you must trust that the entity that issues you a certificate will actually have your gold when you go to redeem it. It is not possible to continuously, trustlessly audit whether or not the issuer has the gold they claim to hold. Therefore, if gold is to be digitally efficient, you must rely on a member of the Cartel of Trust (e.g., banks and governments). In that sense, digital gold is not censorship resistant.

Fiat

Fiat is first created when a government decrees that a previously worthless item is now money. The US government (USG) issues the US dollars (USD). The USD is pure fiction printed on paper cloth; but by mandating that all legal transactions within America’s borders must be conducted in USDs, it creates demand for the currency. And because most new USD is created virtually – i.e., by the government digitally crediting and debiting the accounts of commercial banks – rather than through the physical printing of bills, its creation doesn’t in and of itself require nearly any energy.

The value of the USD or any fiat currency rests solely on the credibility of the government issuing the funny money. The problem with credibility is that it doesn’t follow that spending more energy per capita leads to a more credible government. A government can spend a lot of energy or possess a lot of natural wealth but be extremely corrupt such that no one trusts it to maintain the value of its fiat currency in energy terms over time. Two examples of extremely naturally rich countries with dogshit currencies are Myanmar and Zimbabwe. Politics are more important than the material wealth of a government when it comes to the valuation of their currency. 

This means that a fiat currency cannot be assumed to hold any energy value over time, and it is impossible to predict objectively which political form has the most longevity. Large-scale human civilisation is only a few thousands years old. That timespan isn’t even a speck of dust when compared to the length of time the universe has existed. And during this time, we have experimented with various forms of political organisation – none of which have yet proved infallible.

Fiat can be physically or digitally held. Right now, the world is in a transition period where we have paper money and digital fiat tokens. I believe paper money will be eradicated by most nations over the next decade. All fiat will be digital, and will move instantaneously on some sort of payments network – either operated solely by the state like CDBCs, private banking institutions (e.g., JPM coin), or public blockchains (e.g., ERC-20 USD Tether). Digital fiat also is not censorship resistant because ultimately the government controls the issuance of it, how it can be used, and can change the rules whenever it pleases.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is mined into existence by computers solving complex puzzles. Miners buy ASIC chips and, using electricity, create Bitcoin. It is just that simple. There is no other way to create Bitcoin other than by consuming electricity.

The network has established and continuously affirms that there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a finite digital commodity. Being purely digital, Bitcoin has no mass. Whether I have 1 satoshi (1 satoshi = 0.00000001 Bitcoin) or 21 million Bitcoin, they weigh the same amount: nothing.

Bitcoin’s participants all have to agree on the network rules – otherwise, transactions wouldn’t get processed. The network rules are public and transparent for all. The network rules can change, but change requires an overwhelming majority of miners when validating blocks to agree. And the economic game theory underpinning Bitcoin helps ensure that entitles using the network won’t do things that harm their own interests. For example, the network won’t vote to increase the cap on the number of Bitcoin ever produced, as it would destroy one of the key tenets of its value (i.e., that it’s a finite resource). Bitcoin is censorship resistant because the only way the rules can change is a public proposal is put before the entire network and the majority decides. There is no singular entity that can arbitrarily change the network rules.

Now, let’s summarise these three forms of money and their attributes.

Scarcity:

Gold – has a finite supply on earth, but an unknown quantity off-world. When we start mining asteroids, the supply of recoverable gold will skyrocket. What will happen to gold’s “value” at that point in the not-too-distant future?

Fiat – has an infinite supply. The issuing government can create as much as it wants at virtually no cost.

Bitcoin – has a finite supply forever and ever and ever.

Digitally Censorship Resistant:

Gold – is a physical commodity. The only way to use a digital representation of gold is to trust a centralised entity to issue a gold digital certificate. In its digital form, it is not censorship resistant.

Fiat – can be either physical or digital. In its digital form, but due to government oversight it is not censorship resistant.

Bitcoin – is purely digital and censorship resistant.

Energy Purchasing Power:

Gold – can be created through various sources of energy derivatives. Therefore, there isn’t one energy derivative that can be said to define the value of gold.

Fiat – requires almost no energy to be created, and retains value based more on the politics of its government than its natural energy wealth. Therefore, it cannot be known what exactly defines its value now or at any point in the future.

Bitcoin – can only be created by computers consuming electricity. The cost of electricity defines the value of Bitcoin over time.

AI Decision Tree

Let’s step through some questions an AI would ask itself before choosing a transaction network and currency.

Can the currency be used in a digital format that is censorship resistant?

As I argued above, I believe an AI will need a currency that can ride on a blockchain that is censorship resistant. Only Bitcoin has these qualities.

Bitcoin wins.

Will the currency retain value over time relative to the foodstuff of AIs?

The food of an AI is electricity. AIs must ensure that they can always eat affordably. The winner here is Bitcoin, because while the value of fiat and gold is not tied to anything definitive or calculable, Bitcoin is intrinsically just a derivative of the cost of electricity.

Bitcoin wins.

Is the currency provably scarce?

On earth the supply of gold is finite, but on a universal scale, the supply is basically infinite. Fiat is not scarce as the issuing government can create more at will for zero cost. Bitcoin’s supply is cryptographically, provably finite.

Bitcoin wins.

Does the currency have provable longevity?

An AI has a much longer potential lifespan than human civilization. Theoretically, an AI that is properly backed up to survive in a hard vacuum, could potentially exist a few trillion years until the heat death of the universe. Human civilization in its current form can only survive on planet earth, and there is no indication we are capable of staving off various earth extinction extinction level events of exogenous or endogenous origins.

An AI shouldn’t trust any institution that requires humans to operate it, as 1) humans are fallible and 2) AIs on a probabilistic basis will outlast human civilization. Gold and Bitcoin mining could be done by AI powered robots in the future, but fiat currency requires the administration of governments composed of humans. An AI is unlikely to allow itself to rely on anything that a human government operates therefore only gold and Bitcoin are suitable.

A tie between gold and Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is thus the logical currency choice for any AI. It is purely digital, censorship resistant, provably scarce, and its intrinsic value is completely electricity-cost-dependent. There is nothing in existence today that comes close to challenging Bitcoin on these aspects.

Bitcoin Price = Moon

After reading all of these arguments, I have a feeling that most of you are wondering if I will try to approximate the price impact of AIs adopting Bitcoin. Well, wonder no more – I fully intend to indulge in this guestimation exercise. Before I do, please understand that the point of this analysis is not to get the number exactly right, but to plant the mental seeds for a narrative about a possible future. If enough people believe in a truly stupendous future where AIs dominate the global economy and use Bitcoin as their currency, then the general market will overpay for growth well before that eventuality.

My mental model is as follows:

1. As I have written about all year, there is going to be an orgy of money printing in the near future as part of an attempt to inflate away the massive amount of unproductive sovereign debt.

2. This newly created money will want to invest in something that promises to give the global economy a new lease on life. In this decade, I believe that will be all things related to AI and robotics. While many other “boring” sectors of the economy will face capital shortages, AI and robotics companies will be flooded with more money than they require at this point in their development.

3. If Bitcoin is seen as likely to be – or even starts to be – used by AIs, then we could see two separate manias combine into one mega mania: the mania of wanting to escape inflation within the fiat financial system, and the mania of wanting to own a piece of the next phase of human + computer evolution. The overlap of these two manias would likely drive investors to grossly overpay for growth, causing the value of the Bitcoin network to rise to silly levels.

I believe the peak of deranged growth investing will occur in the 2025 to 2026 timeframe. Therefore, the goal of my predictions regarding the future price of Bitcoin is to form a narrative that takes hold before then.

I have created a predictive model using three values – Low, Median, and Mania – in order to understand the potential range of outcomes. 

The model hinges on a few key variables:

Size of AI Economy:

What percentage of global GDP the market expects will be powered by AI economic units within the next decade as of 2025/26. I will estimate this as a percentage of 2022 global GDP, which was $100 trillion (IMF).

Low = 5%

Median = 10%

Mania = 50%

Here is some chart porn from others estimating the economic impact of AIs.

Bitcoin Market Cap / Daily Transaction Value Multiple:

The value of the Bitcoin network is a bet on the future amount of transactions that will take place. To get a sense of what is possible, I looked at the past multiples starting in 2015. I took the daily value of BTC transfers on the network excluding change returned to the sender. I then looked back at the past 365-day median to get a value that isn’t influenced by very high or low daily values. Finally, I divided the current day’s Bitcoin market cap by the daily median value to arrive at the forward multiple.

Here are the relevant statistics from 2015 until the present.

Now I create my low, median, and mania estimations.

Low = 8x

Median = 23x

Mania = 172x

I assume that the velocity of Bitcoin transactions will match the total amount of GDP AIs capture. That intuitively makes sense, because GDP is just a measure of economic activity – so it follows that there must be at least that amount of payments going back and forth between economic actors.

BTC Price Estimate = (([Size of AI Economy %] * [2022 $GDP / 365] * [Bitcoin Market Cap to Daily Transaction Value Multiple] * [100% The Velocity % of Payments]) / [Total BTC Supply]) + BTC/USD Spot Price

Tada! Here is the possibility matrix for the percentage increase in the price of Bitcoin and its nominal price level.

Remember – the market will overpay for Bitcoin network growth if it believes there is a possibility that my assumptions could be true in the future. The most money is made when the market price adjusts from “can never happen” to “maybe could happen.” Therefore, if you are long Bitcoin, this essay should be of particular interest to you, and I urge you to share it with as many people as possible.

While I don’t and can’t know the future of the AI + human civilization, I plan to jump aboard the narrative hype wagon and profit. Because while the AI might be my massa, my ass ain’t going to be in the field.

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