The ultimate Bitcoin buyer is AI! In 2026, the robot economy will overturn valuation logic

Global capital inflows turn it into the “Sun,” while Bitcoin temporarily falls into the “Moon.” However, disruptive perspectives are emerging: the ultimate value of Bitcoin may be defined by AI rather than humans. When AI Agents become on-chain economic entities, valuation models based on global wealth will fail. Wall Street is taking control of Bitcoin pricing through ETFs and DAT, replicating the 1990s takeover of the commodity markets.

AI Siphon Effect: Bitcoin’s Performance Lags Behind NVIDIA by Double

Since 2024, Bitcoin has become one of the worst-performing mainstream asset classes, primarily due to the AI sector’s siphon effect. The global capital landscape presents a situation of “China lacks chips, the US lacks electricity, the world lacks storage, humans lack money,” with limited funds and liquidity concentrating into the AI supply chain. From NVIDIA and Broadcom to Google, nearly all the top gains in the S&P 500 are AI-related companies.

Data shows that since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, buying NVIDIA stock at that time has yielded about 10x returns, while buying Bitcoin during the market’s most panic phase (around $18,000) has yielded about 5x, significantly lagging. AI’s explosive power allows it to generate companies with tenfold or even hundredfold short-term returns, which Bitcoin currently cannot match.

However, AI’s rapid growth is not infinite. When this intense wave of explosion subsides in the next 2-3 years, the market will seek new growth points. At that time, digital currencies, as a long-term, revolutionary narrative sector, will still be among the top two targets for capital pursuit. Therefore, the current weakness is cyclical, not structural decline. For long-term investors, most will ultimately not outperform Bitcoin.

This “Sun and Moon” metaphor accurately describes the current capital dynamics. AI has siphoned almost all attention and capital in the short term, but such extreme resource tilting cannot last forever. When AI investment returns begin to revert to the mean, Bitcoin—the “Moon”—will regain reflected light from the “Sun,” and may even experience explosive rebound due to long-term undervaluation.

Is Bitcoin Preparing for AI? An Early Prediction from 2015

As early as 2015, in discussions with Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and others, a forward-looking view was proposed: blockchain and digital currencies may not be prepared for humans but for AI. As AI develops, it needs a decentralized, efficient, globally unified value interaction network, and blockchain is the ideal solution. When AI Agents begin large-scale autonomous economic activities, their demand for native digital currencies will be enormous.

Compared to gold, Bitcoin has three core advantages making it more suitable for an AI economy. First is the global network effect—anyone can participate with minimal units, whereas gold has higher entry barriers. Second is global liquidity—24/7 trading without borders, unlike physical gold transfer and trading limitations. Third is technological innovation—Bitcoin’s network can build new protocols and applications, whereas gold’s uses are mainly industrial and decorative.

Three Main Reasons Why AI Becomes Bitcoin’s Major Buyer

Decentralized Settlement Demand: AI Agents require instant settlement across platforms without human approval, perfectly suited for Bitcoin

Digital Native Characteristics: AI cannot operate physical gold but can easily manage Bitcoin private keys and on-chain transactions

Global Standardization: Bitcoin protocol is globally consistent, eliminating the need for AI to handle different national gold standards and regulations

This valuation shift depends on the speed of AI development and its integration with blockchain. Currently, the crypto industry’s combination with AI mostly remains at the “friction point” or application layer, such as using AI concepts to issue tokens, rather than forming a true symbiotic relationship. Only when AI’s demand for decentralized value settlement becomes a necessity will this valuation upheaval truly occur. Until then, Bitcoin’s valuation will mainly reference “digital gold” and its share of global wealth (currently about $900 trillion).

Wall Street Financial Weapons: ETF and DAT’s Dimensionality Reduction Strike

Wall Street is leveraging its mature financial tools and vast capital advantage to gradually dominate the pricing power and liquidity of crypto assets, similar to its takeover of the commodity markets in the 1990s. Before the late 1990s, commodity markets were dominated by physical traders like Cargill. Later, Wall Street invented “paper oil” (futures, options, and other derivatives) and used its superior balance sheets to access cheap capital, eventually surpassing traditional traders in trading volume and influence.

Today’s crypto market is reenacting this story. The most successful “applications” in the Bitcoin ecosystem are MicroStrategy (MSTR) and spot ETFs—both are financial products born from Wall Street, not native crypto applications. The rise of DAT (Digital Asset Vault) is a pure manifestation of financial power. Unlike mining companies that need to buy mining rigs and build mines, DAT completely escapes the physical business gravity. It can raise funds efficiently through issuing stocks, bonds, and other mature US market tools, then use the capital to buy Bitcoin, forming a purely financial, efficient cycle.

Capital markets have a strong network effect. The US stock market is a “oasis” of global liquidity, while other markets (London, Hong Kong) are relatively “deserts.” Therefore, DAT listed in the US can achieve the highest valuation and best liquidity, while similar companies elsewhere struggle to match. Wall Street’s influence mainly concentrates on the financialization of top blue-chip assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, while native crypto participants’ influence is relatively declining.