OpenAI wants to redesign the American economy — Here’s what it means for crypto investors

On April 6, OpenAI published a 13-page document called “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First.” In this doc, the $852 billion company proposes a couple of ambitious initiatives, such as a Public Wealth Fund modeled on Alaska’s oil dividend program, which shares oil revenue with residents. It also proposes that the tax base should be shifted to capital gains and income, and envisions a 32-hour work week without reduction or loss of pay. 

The paper is very ambitious, calling for automatic safety nets with benefits for humans beyond what is currently available. It cited how political choices helped society navigate major technological transitions, such as the Industrial Revolution. 

OpenAI argued that two historical periods, the Progressive Era and the New Deal, modernized the social contract for a world reshaped by electricity and mass production. And the transition to superintelligence and automated systems demands something equally ambitious, which is a new industrial policy that ensures gains from AI are distributed broadly and not concentrated on a small number of investors or firms.

OpenAI summed everything up to three goals: share prosperity broadly, mitigate risks, and democratize access and agency. However, this reads as a company that transitioned from non-profit to a for-profit, telling Washington how to tax capital and regulate automated systems.

The five proposals that matter for crypto

OpenAI’s paper never directly mentions crypto; however, almost every major proposal in the document touches directly on the digital assets economy. And this is very important to crypto investors, as it could have implications at a magnitude that can only be compared to the SEC’s regulatory pivot over the past few years. 

To understand the implications of the proposals on crypto, we need to translate the company’s language into crypto terms. 

1. Capital gains tax shift

With the trajectory of AI, the concept of work and production will shift, and OpenAI argues that this will increase the capital gains and profit of organizations,  thereby reducing the reliance on payroll taxes. This means that the funding base for Social Security, Medicaid, etc, will be eroded. 

OpenAI proposes that the government rely more on taxes on capital gains and corporate income, adding that this “would help stabilize funding for essential programs while supporting workforce transitions in an AI-driven economy.”

The capital gains tax shift proposed by OpenAI has the most impact on crypto and the digital economy. According to the IRS, crypto is a property, not a currency; therefore, it is subject to capital gains tax. A policy built around increasing reliance on capital gains directly translates to a tax increase on every crypto investor. 

The timing of this is also auspicious, as of 2026, the IRS requires all crypto exchanges to file Form 1099-DA, reporting all gains from sales directly to the government. This essentially means that the government now has a comprehensive view of gains from all crypto and digital assets transactions. 

The proposed OpenAI tax infrastructure seems to be designed to extract revenue from the crypto asset class.

2. Automated labor taxes

On the surface, automated labor taxes don’t affect crypto. However, buried in the tax modernization section is a clause that changes the story. The clause in question is “exploring new approaches such as taxes related to automated labor.” 

No definitions were offered.

So, how does this affect crypto? The answer is the $95 billion in value locked throughout DeFi. The entire architecture of DeFi is based on automation. 

Automated Market Makers execute millions of trades daily without direct human decision-making. Smart contracts autonomously execute transactions whenever the right conditions are met. Yield farming, MEV bots, and AI trading agents are all part of a $1 billion revenue-generating system that requires little to no human oversight or labor.

If the concept of automated labor ever enters a congressional debate as a taxable category, then DeFi is at a direct risk, facing a more scrutinous vector compared to the SEC crackdown on crypto. This is because the conversation won’t be about securities or commodities, but rather about the tax infrastructure itself. 

DeFi advocates may argue that DeFi protocols create financial access for underserved populations; however, that is an argument for legitimacy and social good, not against taxation. 

The political logic behind the automated labor tax is that systems generating economic value without human labor should contribute to the social safety net of human workers. 

If Congress decides that automated systems should fund Social Security and Medicare, the crypto industry will discover that decentralization provides little to no structural protection against a determined taxing authority.

3. The Public Wealth Fund

Another important proposal OpenAI made is the creation of a Public Wealth Fund, which “provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.” 

The fund would be invested in “diversified, long-term assets that capture growth in both AI companies and the broader set of firms adopting and deploying AI”, with the returns going directly to the citizens. 

This is similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which has been distributing dividends from oil wealth to residents since 1982. The Public Wealth Fund is not a new idea for OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman. In 2021, in a paper titled “Moore’s Law for Everything” he proposed a similar fund, the “American Equity Fund”, which is going to be seeded by wealth tax on land and corporations.

Now, here’s where it becomes important for crypto: both the Public Wealth Fund and Bitcoin aim to include ordinary people in wealth generated by transformative technology. 

Bitcoin was built by people who doubted that governments and central banks could be trusted to manage monetary systems fairly. The entire premise of DeFi is that financial infrastructure can be self-executing and trustless. 

OpenAI’s proposal is built on the opposite premise, that a competent, honest government can manage trillions in assets and distribute the returns equitably. One framework requires trusting institutions, while the other was designed for people who don’t.

By proposing the centralized solution without acknowledging the decentralized alternative, OpenAI does something more subtle than arguing against crypto. It eliminates one vision from the conversation entirely. 

Policymakers following OpenAI’s lead will never have to defend a government fund against a Bitcoin alternative, because it was never considered in the first place.

4. Automatic safety net triggers

OpenAI also proposes automatic safety net triggers by defining a package of temporary and expanded safety nets, which include more flexible unemployment benefits, cash assistance, wage insurance, and training vouchers. This package is designed to automatically trigger once predefined thresholds are exceeded. 

Automatic safety net expansion means automatic government spending, which, if it doesn’t match revenue, could result in inflation. However, this produces an opportunity for Bitcoin. 

One of Bitcoin’s main value propositions is as an asset that can be used to hedge against inflation. In an ironic way, this section of OpenAI’s proposal validates Bitcoin’s thesis. 

The combination of AI-driven displacement, automatic benefit expansion, and a tax base that may not grow fast enough to keep pace is exactly the situation where a fixed-supply, censorship-resistant store of value becomes genuinely useful. 

OpenAI is making the macro case for Bitcoin without realizing it.

5. Energy infrastructure and distributed buildout

The paper calls for establishing “new public-private partnership models to finance and accelerate the expansion of energy infrastructure required to power AI.” 

This includes reducing the cost of capital for energy projects through targeted credits and flexible subsidies, removing market barriers to advanced transmission technologies, and granting a “narrow federal authority to accelerate the construction of interregional transmission when it is in the national interest.” 

The phrase “national interest” carries policy weight. Federal discretion over grid priority means the top level of government decides who gets power first, at what cost, and on what timeline. 

If AI data centers are classified as critical infrastructure, the government can fast-track transmission to major compute hubs. 

OpenAI is explicit that AI data centers should “pay their own way on energy so that households aren’t subsidizing them”. However, the energy buildout framework, with its subsidies, credits, and federal authority, will inevitably create winners and losers among large electricity consumers.

In the US, crypto miners use a lot of electricity. Data centers in Texas, Georgia, and the Pacific Northwest currently compete with other businesses for access to the grid and lower power prices. 

Whether an expanded grid is good for miners depends on whether it is spread out or focused on AI compute. The paper’s language favors concentration, which means that federal authority applies when transmission serves the “national interest.” 

In this case, the “national interest” is AI data center capacity. That is a risk for mining operations that they should not ignore.

Why crypto’s absence from the paper is the story

OpenAI released a 13-page paper talking about regulating automated systems and distributing technological wealth amid the transition to superintelligence. However, there was no single mention of crypto, blockchain, DeFi, or digital assets. 

This is not an oversight; OpenAI and AI in general operate in the same technological economy as digital assets. Its investors include the same institutional funds. The omission is a choice, and three implications follow from it.

1. “Automated labor” is a DeFi-shaped hole: The paper proposes taxing automated labor, but doesn’t define what constitutes automated labor. Smart contracts and other DeFi tools automate trades without human intervention, and legislators can take the liberty to define this as automated labor.
   The crypto industry faces a future where its regulatory status is determined by whoever is loudest in the room. Right now, the loudest voices are OpenAI, traditional finance, and legacy technology companies, all of whom benefit from centralized solutions and have no incentive to advocate for decentralized alternatives.
2. Right to AI but silence on financial sovereignty: OpenAI advocates that access to AI should be considered as foundational for participation in the modern economy, like access to the internet and electricity, and mass efforts to increase global literacy. While this is commendable, the paper fails to address whether access to permissionless financial systems should be protected the same way.
   Should people have the right to transact without institutional intermediaries? Should access to a financial system that cannot freeze your account or inflate your savings be treated as foundational? The financial rights and benefits discussed in this paper are mediated by a centralized manager, i.e. the government.
3. OpenAI is proposing a centralized answer to the same questions crypto exists to solve: OpenAI doesn’t make a direct argument against crypto, but it frames it in a different way. How can people benefit from technological disruptions in a way that makes decentralization seem wrong?
   A peer-to-peer system that protects individual property rights can’t solve the problem of collective action, which includes making sure that all citizens share in AI wealth, managing systemic risk, and building national infrastructure.
   Medicare doesn’t get money from permissionless money. Bitcoin can’t build power grids. A yield farming protocol does not retrain factory workers who have lost their jobs.
   When you put it this way, crypto doesn’t seem dangerous; it seems pointless. OpenAI doesn’t have to win the fight. It only needs to outline the area.

What to watch

Capital gains tax legislation

Digital assets will be the first to be affected if the “payroll-to-capital-gains shift” becomes a serious topic of debate in Congress. 

Be on the lookout for any tax laws that use the terms “sustained capital gains,” “AI-driven returns,” or “capital-based revenues.” These words don’t only apply to cryptocurrencies, but they do describe the asset class. 

Long-term crypto holding strategies have been based on the long-term capital gains rates of 15% to 20% that are in effect now. A move toward much higher rates, like 28% or more for top earners, along with the Form 1099-DA reporting system that is already in place, would mean a direct and big tax increase for every holder who has assets that have gone up in value.

DeFi classification risk

The idea of “automated labor” gives regulators a new way to look at things that doesn’t involve the securities-versus-commodities debate at all. 

Right now, the fact that there is legal uncertainty about what DeFi has actually helped protect it. If regulators can’t agree on what it is, they can’t tax it consistently. 

The “automated labor” framing clears up that confusion in a way that is not good for DeFi: it doesn’t matter what tokens are, legally. The important thing is whether the system can do economic work without people. 

If the Treasury uses this language, the first major “automated labor tax” proposal for DeFi will be when the industry has to fight not only the SEC but also the full force of the tax code.

Public Wealth Fund inclusion

If a federal Public Wealth Fund ever happens, its investment mandate will tell you more about crypto’s status in the business world than any Congressional hearing. 

The paper says that the fund should put money into long-term, diversified assets that benefit from growth in both AI companies and the larger group of businesses that are using and adopting AI. 

How fund managers interpret that mandate to include digital assets will be a sign. The federal government has recognized crypto as a legitimate long-term asset class, which is what inclusion means. 

Exclusion means that it has been defined as a competing paradigm, or something that is outside the system, instead of a part of it. Pay close attention to the fund’s charter documents.

Energy priority

The federal government’s ability to speed up interregional transmission “when it is in the national interest” gives bureaucrats the power to make decisions that can have a big impact on the economics of mining. 

If AI data centers are seen as critical infrastructure and mining operations are seen as speculative or non-essential, the subsidy and permitting structure could be very bad for crypto. 

Texas is the state to keep an eye on because it has some of the biggest Bitcoin mining operations in the world and is the center of the battle between AI compute and cryptocurrency mining for grid access and pricing.

Inflation trigger 

Automatic safety net triggers put pressure on the economy. How Congress and the Federal Reserve react, either by raising taxes, tightening monetary policy, or accommodating, will determine whether that pressure leads to real inflation. 

If the system causes inflation to stay high, the idea that Bitcoin is a good store of value becomes much stronger.

For a long time, people who support Bitcoin have said that fiscal dominance, which is when central banks can’t tighten without causing political pain, is the only way modern monetary systems can end. 

If OpenAI’s plan were fully carried out, it would turn that argument from theory into practice.

The silence is the message

The paper from OpenAI is very well thought out. It takes the idea of broad-based prosperity seriously, uses historical examples carefully, and presents its ideas as a starting point rather than an end point. 

But the strategy is also the level of sophistication. OpenAI frames the problem as a collective action challenge by asking how we can make sure everyone benefits, manage systemic risk, and build national infrastructure. 

This makes decentralized solutions seem not wrong, but just not the point. Peer-to-peer systems can’t help with problems that require people to work together. The paper never has to make a case against crypto. It just didn’t go out of its way to give crypto a seat at the table.

The more difficult question is the one the paper doesn’t ask: what if people don’t trust the institutions that are supposed to do this job? 

The whitepaper for Bitcoin came out in 2008, right after banks went bankrupt, and the public had to pay for it. That lack of trust is still there. 

OpenAI’s plan is based on the idea that the government is good at what it does and that institutions are honest. Crypto is an alternative system where you won’t have to make that bet. 

OpenAI makes sure that policymakers will never have to defend the centralized answer against a decentralized competitor by only showing Congress one vision and not acknowledging that there is another one.

Criticism alone won’t be enough for crypto to have a say in the next ten years. The industry needs another document that covers all of the issues, such as displaced workers, energy infrastructure, access for underserved communities, and safety net funding. 

At this time, one side of the argument has a 13-page policy paper, a workshop in Washington, research fellowships, and interest from Congress. The other one has a market cap and a whitepaper from 2008. That is a head start that will take a lot of effort to make up.