Nick Szabo, one of the first people to come up with the idea of digital scarcity, decided to mix things up a bit by suggesting that AI could end up being the biggest enemy of gold, while also working in Bitcoin’s favour.
In his opinion, once AI starts to take over production, it will ramp up the supply of pretty much everything, from retail goods to printing money and even mining, with robot diggers extracting more of the metals that for centuries were sold as rare.
If the gold supply becomes elastic in an age of machines that do not tire, then its historical appeal as a store of value is compromised, because it is no longer scarcity but technology that defines output.
Bitcoin, Szabo stressed, does not bend to this logic. AI may grow or many robots may operate mines, but the programmed ceiling of 21 million coins never changes. This, he implies, makes Bitcoin the only asset that cannot be inflated by outside forces, which is why he sees its role as fundamentally different from that of gold or fiat.
Machine money
Some people say Bitcoin is now trading more like a tech stock, but for Szabo, this is just a natural learning curve: early adopters bring volatility, leveraged bets and noise, but over decades, the true store-of-value qualities will surface.
In fact, it is possible that one day AI agents could even use BTC to make transactions or even request payment in it. Put simply, when the machines choose their money, they will not be hoarding gold bars — they will be running on code that cannot be gamed.
