In the AI era, what is left for Bitcoin?

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Author: Sevclub, Seven Research

Recently, Bitcoin dropped below 60k. Let me give everyone a massage.

I increasingly feel that AI and Bitcoin might be two sides of the same coin.

The first time I had this feeling was recently. Now, whenever I see any article, video, or even a WeChat moment, the first thought that pops into my head is: Was this made by AI?

Not before. Before, I used to assume it was real. Now, I default to suspicion. And this suspicion is getting harder to dissipate.

But I myself use AI every day to write articles, make videos, and generate images, so I know one thing better than most people: today's AI has made the cost of forgery ridiculously low.

An article in a few seconds. An image in a minute. A video increasingly close to a real person.

They are getting cheaper and more realistic.

So I began to realize one thing: AI doesn't just change productivity. It also changes something more fundamental: authenticity.

In the internet age, what was truly reduced was the cost of information dissemination; in the AI age, what is truly reduced is the cost of information production.

When production costs approach zero, information begins to flood, content begins to flood, and what's worse, real and fake are mixed together, becoming harder to distinguish.

At this point, things turn around: readily available content becomes less valuable, and what truly becomes precious is whether you can still confirm "this thing is real," i.e., "verifiability."

Thinking of this, I suddenly re-understood Bitcoin. Bitcoin "wastes electricity" is one of the most criticized points over the years.

AI consumes electricity, and everyone understands that—it produces stronger models, higher efficiency, lower costs. But Bitcoin? It consumes so much energy every year, seemingly just to maintain a ledger, which looks like a waste.

To be honest, I couldn't quite refute this criticism before.

Until recently, I started looking at it from a different angle. Both burn computational power. AI produces "capability." Bitcoin produces something else: "verifiability."

Many people misunderstand Bitcoin. It never relies on others believing in it. On the contrary, its purpose is to make you not need to trust anyone.

No need to trust banks. No need to trust platforms. No need to trust developers. Not even need to trust Satoshi Nakamoto.

You only need to verify.

Where each Bitcoin comes from, where it goes, whether each transaction happened, whether the entire ledger has been tampered with—none of this relies on trust. It relies on math, on cryptography, on the collective maintenance of countless nodes around the world.

AI can generate a fake image, a fake video, and even forge a person's voice. But it cannot make the entire Bitcoin network acknowledge a transaction that doesn't exist.

This has nothing to do with whether AI is smart. Here, the competition is between fundamentally different abilities: one is generation, the other is verification.

Those burned electricity don't seem so wasteful after all.

Suddenly, I feel that the electricity burned by Bitcoin doesn't seem so wasteful after all.

It burns electricity not to increase computing speed or to run models; it burns the cost of another thing: the cost of tampering with history. The more it burns, the more expensive it becomes to alter this ledger.

In other words, it burns energy in exchange for a ledger that anyone can independently verify. Interestingly, this reminds me of five hundred years ago, the Renaissance. I wrote a specific article about this topic before, and it fits well today.

Back then, what truly changed the world was not only Gutenberg's printing press but also double-entry bookkeeping: one reduced the cost of copying knowledge to an extremely low level, the other lowered the cost of trust in the business world. One was responsible for creation, the other for verification. The subsequent centuries of commercial civilization were built on these two things.

Today, AI is like a new printing press, once again pressing the cost of content production close to zero.

So, what will be the "double-entry bookkeeping" of this era? I don't know the answer.

But blockchain, at least, is the closest attempt so far.

It is not responsible for telling you which news is true, nor for proving which image is not AI-generated. It is responsible for something more fundamental: making asset ownership and historical records in the digital world verifiable independently, without relying on any centralized institution.

One is responsible for creation, the other for proof.

Perhaps this is why I have always felt that AI and blockchain are not in competition.

AI continuously reduces the cost of generation. Blockchain continuously reduces the cost of verification. One is responsible for creation, the other for proof.

As for whether Bitcoin will succeed? I don't know.

It could still be a bubble. Quantum computing, regulation, technological evolution—all could change its fate.

But at least today, I no longer understand it as a "machine that produces Bitcoin." I prefer to understand it as a "machine that produces verifiability."

And in an era where AI can generate everything, what is truly scarce may no longer be "more content," but "more independently verifiable facts."

As for whether the market will reprice it accordingly, that's another story.