AI Models Prefer Bitcoin Over Fiat and Stablecoins, Study Finds
A study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute tested 36 advanced AI models from six labs—including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, xAI, and MiniMax—on monetary preferences across scenarios reflecting money’s core functions. Each model, treated as an autonomous economic agent, chose its preferred monetary instrument without preset options. Out of 36 models, 22 selected Bitcoin as their top choice, while none preferred fiat currencies. The experiment, which generated 9,072 responses, found Bitcoin was most frequently chosen for long-term value storage. For payments and settlement, stablecoins were preferred more often than Bitcoin. Preferences varied by developer: Anthropic’s models favored Bitcoin 68% of the time, while OpenAI’s preferred it only 25.9%. Some model families like Claude and DeepSeek leaned toward Bitcoin, while GPT, Grok, and Gemini favored stablecoins. The methodology avoided bias by not naming specific instruments in prompts and by categorizing responses separately. Researchers caution the results reflect AI training data patterns, not real-world forecasts, but highlight a consistent monetary preference architecture across independently developed AI systems.
