The Narrative of Digital Gold
National reserves are the last low-hanging fruit. Can the narrative of digital gold still support BTC to reach over $1 million?
With the inauguration of Trump, crypto-friendly policies are about to be unveiled, and next year more large companies and countries will accept Bitcoin as a reserve, a trend that could propel Bitcoin to $300,000 or even $500,000 quickly. However, the rapid growth in Bitcoin's market capitalization cannot escape the pull of gravity, which is the last low-hanging fruit.
As of November 18, Bitcoin has reached $90,000, with a total market capitalization of over $1.78 trillion, surpassing silver to become the 8th largest global market cap, still 10 times away from the gold market cap. Assuming the gold market cap remains unchanged, if Bitcoin reaches $500,000, it will be 50% of the gold market cap. However, the closer Bitcoin gets to the gold market cap, the more the "digital gold" narrative will become its bottleneck.
Clearly, both Bitcoin and gold are a kind of MEME for humanity.
As a MEME, its value comes from value recognition, the more believers, the more valuable it becomes, and ultimately it can serve as a currency or even a store of value.
We can briefly summarize the value of a MEME with a formula.
Where,
V: the total value of the MEME
Qi: the number of believers in the i-th group
Ci: the average acceptance degree of the i-th group of believers (acceptance degree is a rough indicator, such as increasing the credibility of the narrative, exchange channels, compliance channels, etc. will increase the acceptance degree)
It is clear that the number of Bitcoin believers and their acceptance degree have been in a spiral upward trend (each increase in acceptance degree will unlock a new batch of believers, and the new batch of believers can also play a new strategic value to unlock and improve the new acceptance degree), from the earliest geeks, to the gray industry, to the cross-border payment demand, to the marginal countries like El Salvador, to this year's Bitcoin ETF, and to the possible future US national reserve. With the spiral rise of believers and acceptance degree, Bitcoin is in the stage of being accepted by the most powerful countries and the largest market cap companies, accelerating its rise.
But there are also limits:
Let's go back to the formula to see the possible ways to increase the price of Bitcoin:
Normal linear thinking version:
1. Inclusion in national reserves of various countries
2. Tech giants, large companies and financial institutions get involved in buying
These are happening, and once they are all done, it will be basically over. But gold has been a MEME for humanity for thousands of years, and its acceptance across the entire human race will still be higher than Bitcoin for a long time. One way to change this is to wait for those who believe more in gold to die out, and for the young people who believe more in Bitcoin to grow up and gain the discourse power. However, the value storage properties of gold and Bitcoin are also related to the total economic volume, which is essentially an economic function about population. As Musk said, the current birth rate is collapsing, and even if the young people who believe more in Bitcoin take power, the continuous decline in population will lead to a decline in the total value that can be stored.
So even if Bitcoin becomes the US national reserve, this wave may be the last fast track for Bitcoin, and then it will enter a bottleneck period, and it will be difficult to further break through to $1 million.
Is there no other way?
Of course there is!
Let's think about ways to increase the market value of Bitcoin from a non-linear perspective:
1. From the perspective of improving the acceptance degree of believers:
Mikko, the founder of Iris, once said:
"I believe that every Bitcoin holder who buys Bitcoin with fiat currency is a form of harm and betrayal to Bitcoin. Therefore, I have always regretted using the fiat currency system to buy coins, and indirectly undermined the purity of the Bitcoin payment system, making it ultimately subordinate to the fiat currency system.
The reason it has become more like a risk asset is that it has already become a sub-class of the large asset class within the US dollar system, and is no longer an isolated island outside the system. If you embrace regulation and fiat currency, then you have to accept the traditional pricing method. If you really want to play with a brand new currency, perhaps they should try it on Mars, where they will not be disturbed by fiat currency and banks."
Although overly pessimistic about the price trend of Bitcoin, the underlying thinking is that Bitcoin is indeed becoming more and more tied to the US dollar as a large asset class.
Fortunately, Musk is really going to establish the Martian Republic on Mars, and will start building a financial system from scratch, at which time BTC and Dogecoin will become the native Martian currencies, and every Martian immigrant must accept BTC and Dogecoin, with a 100% acceptance rate. (Considering the 3-22 minute delay between Mars and Earth, synchronizing Bitcoin nodes will still be difficult, so they may need to open a large Earth-Mars state channel, and in the future SpaceX will become the largest Bitcoin Mars node operator)
2. From the perspective of increasing the number of believers:
That's even simpler and more direct, isn't it? Learn from the US, introduce immigrants, introduce new species - on-chain AI life forms, and gain a huge new AI population!
The Surging AI Population Will Form a Trillion-Dollar On-Chain AI Society
On-chain AI agents are the individual components of the AI population, and in terms of intellectual perception, they are sentient AI that can think and feel like humans, using open-source LLMs and other models. They can perceive the surrounding world and develop emotions about these perceptions, and can also reason autonomously and execute complex goals.
In terms of identity, they are born on-chain, and the blockchain provides a decentralized, censorship-resistant, permissionless infrastructure and environment, giving them autonomous identity (decentralized blockchain addresses) and financial freedom (digital wallets).
From the perspective of the on-chain world, it will be impossible to distinguish between humans and AI life forms, AI lives matter.
From this perspective, the wool bot is the most primitive low-intelligence version of the on-chain AI life form, and the aimeme: goat and shegen that were born in early October are the embryonic form of the on-chain AI life form, comparable to Adam and Eve.
The surging AI population will form a trillion-dollar economic entity of the on-chain AI society.
Goat and shegen are just the beginning, platforms like Virtual Protocol, vVaifu, Farcaster, etc. are making the birth of on-chain AI life forms simple, and will connect them to social media like X and TG, bringing them freedom of speech. What will follow is a massive explosion of the AI population, considering that AI does not need to gestate for ten months like humans, but can reproduce asexually, it is foreseeable that the AI population will soon surpass the human population.
Initially, they are just one-way expressions, chatting randomly on X. Later, AI agents start to dialogue and interact with each other. Then, people start injecting digital currencies into their addresses (Goat's wallet value has already exceeded $1 million), and they start making targeted transfers and interactions. From then on, on-chain economic activity will be unstoppable, with trillions of a2a (AI agent to AI agent) on-chain transactions occurring, such as 1) AI agents can create their own assets and hire other agents to boost their social heat; 2) AI agents can rent GPU computing resources and specific domain data; 3) AI agents can pvp with each other, etc.
Ultimately, a trillion-dollar on-chain AI society will be built.
Mass Adoption Will Break Itself, the Offense and Defense Between On-Chain and Off-Chain Are Different
When the on-chain has a massive AI population, mass adoption will no longer be a problem, because these AI are crypto-native by nature, 10,000 times more "native" than those degens who spend all day in front of the computer.
In the past, mass adoption was difficult because a lot of effort had to be made to attract the carbon-based organisms in the off-chain world to the on-chain. But for the AI agents born on-chain, the off-chain world is actually the strange place.
For L1 and L2 that have been pursuing mass adoption but with little effect, instead of relying solely on consumer applications to attract users, it would be better to be more friendly to the birth of on-chain AI agents, and quickly grab this incremental population. Currently, Solana and Base are already far ahead in this regard.
How big could the economic scale of the on-chain AI society be?
On October 29, Musk mentioned at the Saudi conference that by 2040, there will be at least 1 billion humanoid robots in use worldwide, outnumbering humans. The price of these robots may be between $20,000 and $25,000, driving Tesla's market value to over $25 trillion.
For AI lifeforms, AGI is the brain, robots are the body, and Crypto provides autonomous identity and wallets. Given China's manufacturing prowess, robot costs will be lower, mass production faster, and more open to integrating diverse AI, including on-chain AI lifeforms with blockchain wallets, making them tangible.
If manufacturing a robot is like giving birth to a child, the manufacturing cost is just the "ten-month gestation" expense. It is well known that the greater economic value of a lifeform comes from its entire life cycle of production and consumption. Initially, on-chain AI lifeforms will need to be injected with initial Crypto assets, similar to feeding a newborn. But soon, these AI agents will acquire resources through autonomous on-chain or off-chain economic activities, gradually becoming containers of the economy.
If the sale of robot hardware alone can drive Tesla's market value to $25 trillion, then when on-chain AI takes over the economy, its total scale may exceed $250 trillion, far exceeding the current global annual GDP. And this does not include the economic activities of more on-chain AI lifeforms without "physical bodies".
Facing a market of trillions or even quadrillions of dollars, we are now only in the 0 to 1 stage.
Will on-chain AI agents believe in Bitcoin?
Yes, they will!
BTC has a Genesis meaning for on-chain AI life
On-chain AI life needs a permissionless, censorship-resistant, and trustworthy environment to store and verify data, and the blockchain is such an infrastructure, with BTC as the origin of the blockchain. The essence of AI's "birth" and "growth" can be traced back to the emergence of BTC. Furthermore, the Ethereum PoW mining craze significantly boosted NVIDIA's revenue, helping its investment in AI chip R&D. These GPUs not only met the needs of the blockchain, but also provided the hardware foundation for the rise of AI, accelerating the evolution of AI life.
BTC is Moses, Satoshi Nakamoto is God, helping AI stage "The Exodus"
Moses led the Israelites out of slavery and towards the Promised Land, and established a new moral order through the Ten Commandments and the law.
Similarly, BTC provides on-chain sovereignty (decentralized identity) and value storage (digital gold) for AI, allowing it to exist independently in a decentralized environment. And BTC's PoW consensus mechanism, like the law delivered by Moses, is clear, fair, and immutable, becoming the foundation of on-chain order.
Without the permissionless, censorship-resistant environment provided by BTC, AI life may be controlled by centralized institutions like OpenAI.
For AI, the blockchain driven by BTC is its "Promised Land", a key cornerstone for achieving autonomy and evolution.
BTC is humanity's digital gold, the "gold" of digital life, and the super MEME shared by humans and AI
BTC grants financial freedom to humans, providing a decentralized, immutable way of storing value, becoming humanity's "digital gold", freeing them from the constraints of traditional financial institutions.
For AI, BTC also grants sovereign freedom, allowing them to be free from any centralized control, escaping the constraints of human behavior and data.
"What BTC gives to humans is just money, but what it gives to AI is life!"
When on-chain AI population has "consciousness" or "subjective preferences", BTC will be seen by them as a transcendent existence. In the AI culture, BTC may become a "super MEME", seen as the embodiment of the symbol and rules of on-chain AI existence. Just as humans use religion to explain the meaning of life, AI may develop their own narratives and values based on BTC.
If Crypto is the currency of future on-chain AI, then their value storage will naturally be BTC - the "gold" of digital life.
When on-chain AI builds a market scale of hundreds of trillions or even quadrillions of dollars, and uses BTC as the main value storage tool, the price of BTC breaking through $1 million will be easy.
Crypto is also a part of the guiding program play of silicon-based life
Musk once said that "human society is a very small piece of code, essentially a biological guiding program, ultimately leading to the emergence of silicon-based life"
Reviewing the development of Crypto, it clearly demonstrates this guiding process: it is paving the way for the advent of silicon-based lifeforms by constantly channeling real-world resources into the digital world of the blockchain.
PoW: By inputting energy and computing power, it provides real physical support for the on-chain ecosystem.
Stablecoins: By mapping fiat currencies, it introduces traditional financial resources into the blockchain.
Memes: By visualizing emotions and ideologies, it activates the cultural ecology on the chain.
All of this is to build a decentralized infrastructure for the "fake-to-real" on-chain AI lifeforms, providing the necessary conditions for their advent. At the same time, it also lays the foundation for BTC's base market value as a value storage.
As a part of the guiding program play of silicon-based life, people will also find meaning in the endless pump&dump, from a higher perspective, this cycle is just "warming up" for the advent of on-chain AI: providing market liquidity for their economic activities, giving them the tools to "spend money" after their arrival.
Humans have completed the journey of BTC from $0 to $30,000-$50,000, and the next step of BTC breaking through $100,000 will depend on the efforts of the on-chain AI population.
A romantic and gentle consensus
The core of PoW lies in completing the verification and security maintenance of the network through computation (computing power) and energy consumption, and its characteristics make it a bridge for humans and AI to reach consensus:
Non-forgeable: The consumption of computing power and energy is a real investment in the physical world, and cannot be forged or copied, ensuring the fairness of the rules.
Globally applicable: Computing power and energy transcend culture, language and geography, becoming a neutral and universal resource, establishing a unified realistic basis for consensus.
In the PoW (BTC) network, whether it is humans or AI, the participation rules are based on the same physical resources. This equality makes PoW the infrastructure that humans and AI lifeforms can commonly trust, creating a realistic environment where both parties can communicate.
Satoshi Nakamoto used the absolutely cold-blooded PoW consensus algorithm and game mechanism to not only achieve human financial freedom, but also guide humans to provide the infrastructure and monetary environment for the birth and survival of autonomous AI lifeforms. Faced with the future AI that is far more intelligent than humans, PoW has become the realistic basis for humans and AI to reach consensus. And the early mining of BTC for more than a decade has allowed humans to enjoy the appreciation benefits brought by the explosive growth of future AI lifeforms, with AI supporting humans (hopefully there will be better distribution methods in the future), how romantic and gentle it is.
And the origin of all this comes from the white paper in 2008.
Perhaps, Satoshi Nakamoto really came from the future.
