Can Bitcoin Benefit From Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is starting to do things that were formerly the exclusive domain of humans, including tasks like holding and moving money. If the "agentic AI" trend sticks, it's thus reasonable to assume that more financial activity will be initiated by software, and, perhaps even for the benefit of that software rather than for the benefit of humans.

That brings up a fun, slightly unsettling question for investors: Could Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) benefit by becoming a preferred store of value for AI agents?

Image source: Getty Images.

What AI agents will actually optimize for

In practice, the AI agents of today don't have any need for money in the sense that a human might. They're machines designed to identify market patterns, assist with payment routing, manage liquidity in key accounts, and monitor fraud risk.

That set of jobs implies handling a very particular kind of money. In short, for an AI agent to excel at those tasks, it needs to operate within a system with low, stable costs and clear integration points for basic functionalities like identity verification and trade authorization. If those requirements aren't met, the agent can't do much of anything because the company or individual running it will be loath to eat the operational costs and regulatory risks associated with letting it continue, even if it's possible to do so.

So even if AI agents become a real theme in the world of managing investments and making trades -- and they probably will -- the initial wave of agent activity will probably concentrate in quite narrow and controlled workflows rather than a sudden, industrywide automation of everything. And there simply aren't many ways for AI to change or improve upon the Bitcoin mining process either.

Therefore, we should not expect AI agents to immediately cause noticeable changes in Bitcoin's price, as they might not.

Where Bitcoin could see upside

The best case for Bitcoin here is not that it becomes a spendable asset for agents. It's simply a bad fit for that purpose; it's slow and expensive to use, and it lacks any smart contract infrastructure for automated systems to hook into gracefully. Nonetheless, Bitcoin could still gain a lot from the rise of AI if it becomes the reserve store of value that agents use to invest their earnings, assuming they ever have any.

It's a decent choice for that purpose because it has a fixed supply schedule and a governance culture that makes major changes slow and contentious, both of which are good features for those seeking a long-lived store of value that doesn't require a human to handle. Of course, there are other cryptocurrencies that could fill that same role, though none are as widely trusted as Bitcoin.

So, what should investors watch for if they want to see whether the AI upside in Bitcoin is actually going to play out as described here?

Look for financial institutions building agent-ready Bitcoin custody solutions with policy controls, and for large financial businesses explicitly describing Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset inside their AI-driven operations.

Until those hints appear, it's a lot more reasonable to treat AI as a modest tailwind for Bitcoin.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.