Author: Sevclub, Seven Research
Bitcoin recently fell below $60,000. Let me offer some perspective.
I increasingly feel that AI and Bitcoin might be two sides of the same coin.
I first had this feeling recently. Now, whenever I see an article, a video, or even a social media post, a thought immediately pops into my head: Was this made by AI?
I never used to think this way. I used to assume everything was real. Now, my default is suspicion. And this suspicion is becoming increasingly hard to shake.
Ironically, I use AI daily to write, make videos, and generate images, so I know something many don't: today, the cost of faking things with AI is absurdly low.
An article? A few seconds. An image? One minute. A video? It's getting closer and closer to a real person.
They're becoming cheaper and more realistic.
So, I've started to realize something: what AI truly changes isn't just productivity. It changes something more fundamental: authenticity.
The internet era drastically reduced the cost of *spreading* information. The AI era drastically reduces the cost of *producing* information.
When the production cost approaches zero, information begins to flood, content becomes abundant. Even worse, real and fake get mixed together, becoming harder and harder to tell apart.
At this point, the situation reverses: easily obtainable content becomes increasingly worthless. What becomes truly valuable is whether you can still confirm "this is real." In other words, "verifiability."
Thinking of this, I suddenly understood Bitcoin anew. Bitcoin's "waste of electricity" is one of the points it's been most criticized for over the years.
AI consuming electricity? Everyone understands. It consumes power for stronger models, higher efficiency, lower costs. But Bitcoin? It consumes so much energy every year, seemingly just to maintain a ledger. It looks like a waste.
Frankly, this criticism was one I also struggled to fully counter before.
Until recently, I started looking at it from a different angle. Both consume computing power. AI produces "capability." Bitcoin produces something else: "verifiability."
Many misunderstand Bitcoin. It has never relied on people *believing* in it. Quite the opposite, its very purpose is to let you *not have to trust* anyone.
You don't have to trust banks. You don't have to trust platforms. You don't have to trust developers. You don't even have to trust Satoshi Nakamoto.
You only need to verify.
Where every bitcoin came from, where it went, whether a transaction occurred, whether the entire ledger has been tampered with—none of this relies on trust. It relies on mathematics, cryptography, and the maintenance by countless nodes worldwide.
AI can generate a fake image, a fake video, even forge a person's voice. But it cannot, out of thin air, make the entire Bitcoin network acknowledge a transaction that never happened.
This has nothing to do with how smart AI is. Here, the contest isn't about the same kind of capability. One excels at generation, the other excels at verification.
Suddenly, the electricity Bitcoin burns doesn't seem so wasteful anymore.
It burns electricity not to increase computing speed or run models. What it burns is the cost of something else: 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 the Renaissance five hundred years ago, a topic I've written about before, and it connects well here.
Back then, what truly changed the world wasn't just Gutenberg's printing press; it was also double-entry bookkeeping. One drastically lowered the cost of *replicating* knowledge; the other drastically lowered the cost of *trust* in the business world. One responsible for creation, one responsible for verification. The commercial civilization of the next few hundred years was built on these two things.
Today, AI is like the new printing press, once again pushing the cost of producing content close to zero.
So, what is this era's "double-entry bookkeeping"? I don't know the answer.
But blockchain is at least the closest attempt we have so far.
It isn't responsible for telling you which news item is real, nor for proving which image wasn't AI-generated. It's responsible for something more fundamental: making asset ownership and historical records in the digital world verifiable on their own, without relying on any centralized institution.
One is responsible for creation, the other for proof.
Perhaps that's why I've always felt that AI and blockchain aren't competitors.
AI continuously lowers the cost of generation. Blockchain continuously lowers the cost of verification. One 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, and technological evolution could all change its fate.
But at least today, I no longer see it as a "machine for making bitcoins." I prefer to see it as a "machine for making verifiability."
And in an era where AI can generate everything, what's truly scarce might no longer be "more content," but "more independently verifiable facts."
As for whether the market will reprice it accordingly, that's another story.
