Authored by Juan Leon, Cryptocurrency Analyst at Bitwise
Translated by Luffy, Foresight News
I recently attended Consensus, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency conferences held in Austin. At this gathering of over 15,000 people, numerous industry experts engaged in discussions on a wide range of topics including tokenization, regulation, monetary policy, and Bitcoin ETFs.
However, if I were to pinpoint the biggest takeaway from this conference, it would be that the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrencies holds even more vast potential than people imagine. By 2030, these two industries could contribute $20 trillion to the global GDP.
This transformation won’t happen overnight, but we have already glimpsed the immense potential on the horizon.
Bitcoin Mining and Artificial Intelligence: Emerging Partnerships
You’ve likely heard of the recent AI boom driving NVIDIA (the world’s largest AI chip manufacturer) to a market value exceeding $3 trillion. This has made the chipmaker the world’s second-largest publicly traded company. Less known, however, is the impact of the AI boom on data centers, which store the ever-growing volume of information propelling AI development.
The fact is, the battle for AI supremacy has led to unprecedented shortages in data centers, AI chips, and power supply. The four largest cloud computing companies globally (Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft) are projected to spend nearly $200 billion by 2025 constructing data centers to meet the increasing demand for AI. Yet, new facilities are unable to keep up with the demand: a report by commercial real estate firm CBRE Group in March showed that approximately 83% of under-construction data center capacity had already been pre-leased, with AI companies and cloud service providers being the primary sources of demand. Data centers simply cannot keep pace with the AI boom.
This is where Bitcoin miners come into play.
The sole purpose of Bitcoin miners is to process and store vast amounts of data. In other words, they possess the resources that AI companies urgently require: powerful chips, state-of-the-art cooling systems, and associated infrastructure.
Last week, AI cloud provider CoreWeave proposed a $1.6 billion acquisition of Bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific, a 55% premium over its market price (Core Scientific later rejected the acquisition offer). Following this, Core Scientific announced the largest mining-AI partnership to date this week: a $3.5 billion deal where Core Scientific will host CoreWeave’s AI-related services in its data centers over the next 12 years.
Core Scientific is not the only company making such moves, with Hut 8, Iris Energy, and other mining firms announcing similar AI hosting plans in recent months.
While this is a positive sign for miners, who may benefit from new revenue streams and a proactive customer base, it also provides crucial support for the broader Bitcoin ecosystem, which relies on these miners to process transactions and secure the network.
Beyond Bitcoin Mining: Long-Term Opportunities for AI and Cryptocurrencies
In the long run, cryptocurrencies and AI may intersect in other noteworthy areas.
One such area is information verification. While programs like ChatGPT have gained popularity (attracting around 100 million monthly active users in just two months), they have also sparked controversy and raised new questions. Who controls the content generated by AI? How transparent should this content be? To what extent does AI reflect or reinforce biases? In a time of widespread “deepfakes,” how do users verify the authenticity of media? (Regarding this last point, the World Economic Forum recently stated that the surge in “false information” caused by AI is the biggest direct risk facing the global economy.)
So, what does this have to do with cryptocurrencies? Remember, public blockchains supporting cryptocurrencies are open to anyone, free from control by centralized entities. Innovative entrepreneurs are exploring ways to leverage this technology to combat potential abuses of AI.
For example: we wrote an article in March about the startup Attestiv, which creates digital “fingerprints” for videos based on their metadata (such as recording time and location). It then stores these fingerprints on a public blockchain. If a video is tampered with, any platform viewing the video can cross-reference it with the original fingerprint to check for alterations, informing viewers that the video has been manipulated. In theory, we could see similar verification methods applied in fields such as original research, official government communications, and more. This is why many experts believe blockchain will play a crucial role in balancing AI.
Another area where cryptocurrencies and AI may converge is virtual assistants. Today, robots like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa can handle everything from booking flights to appointments, with advancements in AI making these tools more versatile. However, if these agents cannot efficiently perform more complex tasks in the future, this versatility may be limited. By combining AI assistants with smart contracts and digital native currencies like Bitcoin or stablecoins (secure currencies that flow without control by centralized entities), new paths may be opened to further enhance our productivity.
These developments lead me to believe that the fusion of AI and cryptocurrencies will leverage the strengths of each field, reshaping how we innovate and interact with the world.
PwC predicts that by 2030, AI and cryptocurrencies will contribute $15.7 trillion and $1.8 trillion respectively to the global economy. While these two figures add up to $17.5 trillion, if their synergy creates compound effects, the total value could soar to $20 trillion or even higher.
