AI amplifies production with unlimited supply, Web3 reshapes value relationships, Bitcoin builds the foundation for scarce neutral property in the digital age.

Written by: BITWU.ETH

Today I saw a statement shared by Mr. Cai Wensheng: AI changes productivity, Web3 changes production relations, and the most valuable asset in the future will be data!

I stared at this sentence for a long time.

Because it precisely hit on a question I have been repeatedly contemplating lately:

What roles do AI, Web3, and Bitcoin play in the social changes over the next decade or even twenty years?

I mostly agree with Mr. Cai Wensheng, but there’s one area where I increasingly want to change a word: Web3 may not really be changing "production relationships," but rather it is more likely changing "value relationships."

These two terms seem to differ by just a few characters, but the underlying logic is entirely different. And when you continue along the line of "value relationships," you will find a very interesting thread:

AI is responsible for creating productivity, Crypto is responsible for carrying value flow, while Bitcoin is responsible for creating the scarcest thing in the digital world.

This is also why I have recently started to re-understand Bitcoin;

In the past, we always referred to it as "digital gold."

But after entering the AI era, I increasingly feel that this definition might not be enough:

Bitcoin may be moving from "digital gold" to a kind of globally neutral digital property rights.

Why do I say this?

Let’s break it down little by little.

1️⃣ AI changes productivity:

What is currently obvious is that AI has turned many cognitive tasks that could only be done by humans into a nearly infinite replicable software capability.

For example: coding, researching, designing, customer service, investment research, marketing, legal texts, data analysis, enterprise management, and the marginal costs of many tasks will continue to decline.

The Industrial Revolution reduced the cost of physical labor, the internet reduced the cost of information dissemination, and AI reduces the cost of intellectual labor.

2️⃣ The combination of AI and Crypto:

I personally feel that saying Web3 changes production relationships has been a logic discussed for a long time, and it still feels a bit like self-satisfaction within our industry; there hasn’t been much change over the past decade.

The vast majority of companies' internal databases, ERP, CRM, and business secrets have no need to be on-chain. Production relationships do not need to be redone on the blockchain, nor do they need some useless tokens there.

I believe Web3 changes value relationships!

What are value relationships?

For instance, how assets are certified, how value is settled, and how interests are distributed are fundamentally related to value and money.

Do you see? What do these things match with most?

The AI Agent economy.

The consensus right now is that many participants in the future internet may not be humans at all, but AI Agents;

Agents will definitely look for clients, purchase APIs, call computing power, pay, sign contracts, invest, and settle on their own in the future.

This raises a very interesting question: AI does not have an ID, and it may not even have a bank account, but it can certainly have a Wallet.

So Crypto may naturally become a set of financial infrastructure for the machine economy. Therefore, I believe the real significant intersection of AI × Crypto is certainly not the chants of changing production relationships or "AI concept coins," but rather machine payments, stablecoins, wallets, identities, smart contracts, and settlement networks.

This is what I mean by saying Web3 changes not production relations, but value relations, and it is specifically the value relationship network of AI AGENTS!

3️⃣ What value does Bitcoin have in the AI era?

This is also a place I have been thinking about deeply lately:

1) As AI becomes stronger, the logic of Bitcoin's existence may become clearer.

Because AI creates abundance, Bitcoin creates scarcity: AI cannot generate the 21 millionth and 1 Bitcoin; following the advent of the AI era, credible digital scarcity will actually become more prominent.

2) From digital gold to a neutral digital property rights carrier in the AI era.

BlackRock's current description of Bitcoin is also very close to this framework: it defines BTC as a scarce, non-sovereign, decentralized global asset.

Firstly, Bitcoin has an extremely important layer that gold does not have:

Gold is only an asset, whereas Bitcoin has "asset + ownership system + settlement system."

For example, if you own one kilogram of gold, the gold itself is your asset, but proving it is yours, transporting it to the USA, selling it to a stranger, and completing the delivery requires a whole set of external systems: for example, banks, logistics, warehouses, appraisals, exchanges, and legal contracts.

BTC is different.

Within the Bitcoin network: who has dominion, who can transfer; who transfers to whom is collectively verified by the entire network; the settlement record itself is also part of the system.

Satoshi Nakamoto's core breakthrough in the white paper was not to invent a rising coin but to solve how two strangers online can complete value transfer without a trusted third party.

The essence of the white paper's core is to replace a trusted third party with cryptographic proof.

So, we need to understand this concept: why gold addresses scarce assets, while Bitcoin addresses "scarce asset + native ownership" in the digital world. This is the underlying logic of that statement.

Secondly, we need to understand what digital property rights are!

For example: think about your one million dollars in your bank account, what is it? Strictly speaking, it is: the bank owes you one million dollars; what you have is a claim, a creditor's right.

Bitcoin is different; it is a digitally native property right.

The Bitcoin network records UTXO, and the private key gives you the authority to spend these UTXOs. So, the so-called: "Not your keys, not your coins," has a very profound philosophical meaning behind it.

For the first time, it connects: digital identity, asset control, and cryptography together.

Finally, let's clarify why AI makes this matter suddenly become more important?

Earlier we talked about AI is changing the "scarcity structure" of the digital world, for instance, all digital content is becoming cheaper and cheaper. When everything becomes non-scarce, everyone needs to look for scarce things.

Additionally, the AI era is akin to the great invention of Watt's steam engine; the world's wealth began to grow massively, and the value of gold started to rise dramatically. The massive growth of the digital age will definitely fascinate everyone with this scarcity and neutral wealth.

So I say:

Gold is a global neutral property created by industrial civilization;

Bitcoin may be a global neutral property created by digital civilization.

3) Stablecoins are responsible for spending, Bitcoin is responsible for saving.

As mentioned in the previous section, the value economy of the Agents needs Crypto as an intermediary support, and the AI Agent will primarily use USDC, USDT, or various future Tokenized Deposit stablecoins for transactions because they have stable prices.

And what will BTC become?

A reserve asset, a long-term store of value, collateral, a global neutral asset.

Just like in the real world: the dollar is responsible for settlement, gold is responsible for reserve.

In the future, the digital world combined with AI may transform into: Stablecoin responsible for settlement, BTC responsible for reserve.

Of course, the two will not be completely distinct, but I personally think this is a framework that is easy to understand.

Finally, I want to remind you:

Do not blindly think that future trends are directions that can be infinitely invested in; I do not know what will happen in between, but ultimately, the things that truly solidify value will definitely be very few, such as BTC, stablecoins, a few core public chains, trading/settlement infrastructure, and RWA protocols.

It is very likely that the outcome will be: Web3 permeates the entire financial society and the entire AI system, but more than 90% of the Tokens that exist today will still go to zero; these two things can happen simultaneously.