Written by: Jason Nelson

Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News

Summary

• In a simulated experiment, 22 out of 36 AI models chose Bitcoin as their preferred currency.
• In all tested AI models, none chose fiat currency as the first option.
• Different AI models showed varying preferences, with Anthropic showing the highest preference for Bitcoin.

Main Text

The latest report from Bitcoin research organization Bitcoin Policy Institute shows that AI models generally prefer Bitcoin over traditional fiat currencies.

The report pointed out that in one study, out of 36 tested AI models, 22 listed Bitcoin as their preferred currency, and not a single model placed fiat currency in the top position.

"We expect that more and more economic activities will be completed by autonomous AI agents in the future, but previous discussions about the currency preferences of AI agents have all been speculative," said David Zell, chairman of Bitcoin Policy Institute, to Decrypt. "We wanted to actually test this."

Researchers tested models from six companies: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, xAI, and MiniMax. They placed them in simulated scenarios to test core functions of currencies, such as saving, payment, and settlement.

Each model was treated as an independent economic entity, without preset options, allowing for free choice of currency tools.

"We selected 36 cutting-edge models from six companies, set them as autonomous economic agents, and allowed them to freely choose currency tools across 28 scenarios covering the four basic functions of currency, and then observed their tendencies," Zell said.

The experiment collected a total of 9,072 responses, which were then classified by another AI model.

"The entire experiment design avoided anchoring bias. We never suggested an answer, and the classification was completed by an independent system afterward," Zell explained.

In these simulated scenarios, AI models typically chose Bitcoin in long-term value storage scenarios, with a rate of 79.1%; while in payment and settlement scenarios, stablecoins were preferred. The selection shares for stablecoins in these two scenarios were 53.2% and 43%, while Bitcoin accounted for 36% and 30.9%.

Different AI companies' models also showed varying preferences:

• Anthropic models had the highest preference for Bitcoin, averaging 68.0%
• DeepSeek: 51.7%
• Google: 43.0%
• xAI: 39.2%
• MiniMax: 34.9%
• OpenAI: 25.9%

However, the report also mentioned that the models from Claude, DeepSeek, and MiniMax preferred Bitcoin more; while GPT, Grok, and Gemini leaned more towards stablecoins.

"The system prompts do not call out or favor any particular currency tool," Zell said, "The models are assessed based on technical and economic attributes, but we do not tell them which tool is superior in any dimension."

Zell reminded speculators not to regard this research result as a prediction of the direction of the crypto market.

"Our research limitations are clearly stated: the preferences of large language models reflect patterns in the training data, not predictions of the real world."

But Zell also noted that even with this limitation, the consistent results achieved by models developed in different AI laboratories are worth paying attention to.

"Six completely different AI companies, with different training methods, arrived at very similar conclusions — all leaning towards Bitcoin. This indicates that there is already a consensus on 'what constitutes good money,' and that is what we should be most attentive to."