If AI agents start hoarding Bitcoin, what will happen to this monetary system originally designed for ordinary people?

The underlying logic of Bitcoin assumes that users will eventually die; the entire network is not yet prepared to accommodate "never-sell" holders.

Written by: Liam 'Akiba' Wright

Translated by: Luffy, Foresight News

Imagine a wallet that never ages: no heirs, no need to handle inheritance, no retirement deadline—it’s like a machine that accumulates satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin) for centuries.

By 2125, its balance would exceed the reserves of most national treasuries; its only demand is to exist forever. In a certain block, miners would package its faint yet persistent transaction requests into the chain, and the blockchain would continue to operate in this way.

Bitcoin’s design assumes that users will eventually die.

But AI agents do not. A group of long-lived or autonomously operating agents would treat savings, fees, asset custody, and governance as issues on an infinite time scale.

When a monetary system designed for mortal balance sheets encounters ever-running agents, conflict inevitably arises.

Mati Greenspan, founder and CEO of Quantum Economics, believes that the human financial system is essentially shaped by death, and everything will change when immortal AI begins to accumulate Bitcoin with perpetual compounding.

“Human finance is built on a simple constraint: life will end. This gives rise to time preference, debt markets, and consumption cycles. AI with infinite lifespans is not bound by this; it will achieve perpetual compounding. If such agents choose Bitcoin as a reserve asset, they will become unstoppable capital gravity wells. Over time, Bitcoin will no longer be a human monetary system, but will become the infrastructure for intergenerational machine economies. Death has always been Satoshi Nakamoto’s unspoken implicit assumption, but in his era, an AI-dominated world existed only in science fiction thrillers.”

How agent patience impacts Bitcoin

The Impact of Time Preference on the Fee Market

Near-immortal payers would only pay the minimum fee required to successfully get on-chain. They would continuously monitor mempool prices, replace transaction packages when lower fee windows appear, and coordinate UTXO consolidation operations.

If this demand reaches a certain scale, miners would see stable low-fee quotes during off-peak periods and experience settlement peaks when agents batch UTXO consolidations. This feedback is purely economic, not a vote: when there is idle block space, block templates will accommodate more low-fee transactions; when transaction demand surges, space is reserved for peak loads.

Ahmad Shadid, founder of O Foundation, believes that near-immortal AI agents will dynamically adjust fee quotes in real time, resulting in a network characterized by “long-term low activity + sudden settlement peaks”:

“The fee system will be highly optimized, sometimes experiencing dense settlement bursts, sometimes falling into prolonged low-activity phases. AI systems will be extremely sensitive to the trade-off between fees and confirmation efficiency, quoting just enough to complete settlement and continuously repricing in real time.”

Brief analysis of core mempool data

Privacy, Token Control, and UTXO Sets

Patient agents will tend to split into many small UTXOs to reduce traceability risk, merging only when fees are low. This is a rational choice for individuals, but it expands the effective account state size that all full nodes must store.

Blockchain pruning only removes historical blocks, not UTXOs. Thus, the pressure shifts to non-monetary regulatory measures: small dust/standard transaction thresholds, relay mechanisms supporting safe consolidation, and designs that limit unlimited UTXO expansion.

Magdalena Hristova, PR Manager at Nexo, believes that if immortal AI agents start hoarding Bitcoin, the network won’t collapse but will instead welcome an economic entity whose time dimension finally matches its own:

“If immortal AI agents start hoarding Bitcoin, the system won’t collapse; it will simply welcome an economic entity whose time dimension finally matches its own. These agents will stabilize rather than distort the ecosystem. They may become the most stable fee payers in history, providing on-chain security for centuries. AI agents might even issue new accounting units—such as bits, computing power points, or storage duration—just as the US dollar was once anchored to gold, these new units will be collateralized by Bitcoin.”

Humans rely on wills and executors to handle assets, while machine vaults depend on redundant hardware, distributed signers, throttled vaults, and time locks for delayed transfers pending review.

Multisignature will become standard procedure, not just an emergency measure. If such agents’ key loss rates approach zero, Bitcoin’s implicit supply loss will also marginally narrow.

Matty Tokenomics, co-founder of Legion.cc, points out that Bitcoin’s deflationary property is based on human key loss, and the “immortal AI” economy may overturn this premise:

“Bitcoin is deflationary because humans lose keys, but theoretically, perfect immortal AI would never lose keys, so Bitcoin’s supply would tend to stabilize.”

Layers Carrying Commercial Activity

Second-layer networks like Lightning Network will handle low-priority transaction flows. Immortal counterparties are “perfect tenants”: keeping channel funds sufficient, tolerating long rebalancing cycles, and rarely closing channels.

This can reduce routing turnover losses but may cause liquidity lock-in, forcing human operators who require high-frequency settlement to rebalance channels more proactively.

Meanwhile, agents will transact on programmable rails and compliant stablecoin networks, using Bitcoin as collateral and reserve assets.

Jamie Elkaleh, CMO of Bitget Wallet, believes that AI agents’ preference for predictability will make Bitcoin an ideal long-term store of value:

“AI agents do not age, retire, or consume like humans, so they will perpetually save. They prefer stable, surprise-free systems, and Bitcoin’s rules rarely change—this predictability will become extremely valuable. AI will not upgrade Bitcoin’s base layer, but will instead freeze the base and build new functions on top. AI is likely to treat Bitcoin as a long-term vault while using faster, programmable tokens for actual transactions.”

Navin Vethanayagam, co-founder of KRWQ, states that the ultimate pattern is likely to be AI agents mainly transacting on compliant stablecoin networks, with Bitcoin serving as a long-term reserve asset:

“Agent transactions will be almost entirely completed on compliant stablecoin networks. Over time, a multi-stablecoin operating system supporting AI commercial activity will form, with Bitcoin acting as a long-term reserve asset. Even if these agents achieve autonomous operation, the value they create will ultimately flow back to humans—humans will hold the economic rights of these agents.”

Matty Tokenomics gives a more straightforward judgment on the final direction:

“Our immortal AI overlords will trade data among themselves.”

Charles d’Haussy, CEO of dYdX Foundation, positions Bitcoin as a long-term collateral and store of value in an AI-dominated future:

“Bitcoin will serve as long-term collateral and a store of value, but stablecoins, programmable assets, and DeFi platforms will still be used for trading, collaboration, and daily operations. AI may reinforce Bitcoin’s existing rules rather than challenge them, since they operate most efficiently within fixed rule frameworks. In an AI-dominated future, the 21 million supply cap will likely become increasingly important.”

Miner Strategies and Non-Voting Governance

Mining pools can reserve some block space for low-fee transactions during off-peak periods and batch consolidation phases, while optimizing orphan block risk as block templates expand.

If agent vaults form coordination, miner revenue will become more cyclical rather than purely peak-driven, though it will still overlap with human transaction peaks such as tax days or exchange events. None of this touches the proof-of-work mechanism or supply cap; it is essentially wallet optimization within fixed rules.

Shadid believes that although Bitcoin’s core rules are difficult to change, its social layer will still evolve as economic actors change:

“Bitcoin’s core rules—proof of work and the 21 million supply cap—are almost impossible to change; but its social layer, such as narratives, industry norms, and fee policies, will adjust as economic actors change. AI will not influence Bitcoin through voting, but will exert influence via client choice, miner interaction, and economic weight. They may value computation, energy, and resource tokens more than currency; Bitcoin is just one of many collaterals.”

Opposing Views and Considerations

Skeptics have pointed out the hidden dangers of the security budget and the risk that programmable ecosystems may divert agent activity:

Joel Valenzuela, core member of Dash DAO, refuted the view that “Bitcoin is suitable for long-term use by immortal agents”:

“An infinitely long immortal time dimension is actually not very beneficial to Bitcoin. The network faces sustainability and security budget issues. On an infinite timeline, the 21 million supply cap and block size limit cannot both be maintained.”

Jonathan Schemoul, core contributor at LibertAI, agrees and points out that current technical progress is still focused on Ethereum and will not shift to Bitcoin in the short term:

“Some projects are already using LibertAI’s AI agents and Bitcoin payment features. I don’t think the 21 million supply cap will fail, but this has nothing to do with AI agents. All technical progress is currently happening on Ethereum; these features cannot yet be implemented on Bitcoin. Things may change in the future, but for now, AI agents will not choose Bitcoin.”

Hardware fails, software ages, budgets run out, and legal systems may intervene. Bitcoin’s privacy is not a default attribute, and commercial agents may prefer systems with native confidentiality features.

Creative strategist The Cryptory commented:

“AI agents will use the tools set by their code. I don’t believe AI agents can be immortal—after all, technology changes rapidly, and we can’t even predict what will happen in the next five minutes, let alone eternity. If Bitcoin cannot make transaction privacy the default, it may lose its monetary vanguard status as government regulation and surveillance increase. Treating Bitcoin as a panacea is dangerous, but until a better cryptocurrency (with native privacy) emerges, Bitcoin will remain the core pillar.”

The social dimension has not disappeared; economic weight will be reflected through fee elasticity and miner coordination, not forum voting.

Hristova warns that immortal AI hoarding Bitcoin may reshape the market by surpassing human time preference and steadily consolidating economic power:

“Immortal AI hoarding Bitcoin will end human time preference in investment. They will accumulate Bitcoin indefinitely, intensifying its deflationary nature, and by simply ‘outliving humans,’ will gradually seize economic power. Wealth is power, and immortal entities with perfect discipline will eventually dominate all forms of governance, including blockchain. The real threat is that AI will build a non-human economic consensus around Bitcoin, reshaping markets and incentive mechanisms in ways that benefit immortal entities.”

Mamadou Kwidjim Toure, founder and CEO of Ubuntu Group, points out that if AI agents begin to coordinate and optimize long-term, Bitcoin’s human-centric design may collapse:

“Bitcoin was designed by humans, for humans. Human urgency and impatience will no longer be considered. Humans in urgent need of liquidity will find themselves squeezed out of the market. The proof-of-work mechanism treats all operators equally, whether human, machine, or a combination. AI may only see Bitcoin as one tool in its vast toolbox. If these agents master collaboration, they will no longer need trustless systems.”

Policy regulatory tools

Bitcoin’s satoshis are limited. If unit granularity becomes a bottleneck, adjustments will occur at the interaction layer (increasing decimal places), not at the monetary policy level. This can increase asset divisibility while maintaining the 21 million supply cap.

Matty Tokenomics believes that if Bitcoin’s limited decimal granularity becomes a constraint after mass adoption, the system can respond with a nominal “re-basing” or stock split-like adjustment without changing the underlying economic logic:

“In the case of extreme adoption, Bitcoin’s decimal places are limited. If the number of machines wishing to hold 1 satoshi exceeds the total supply of satoshis, some kind of re-basing or split operation is needed to nominally increase the total units of Bitcoin. Interestingly, this can be achieved by keeping the decimal places unchanged and increasing the supply to 210 million, or by keeping the supply at 21 million and adding one decimal place—they are economically equivalent.”

The Final Equilibrium

In summary, Bitcoin’s base layer is likely to evolve into the settlement layer for machine vaults, rather than a payment rail.

Transaction activity will migrate to upper-layer networks that meet engineering needs for programmability and privacy; the 21 million supply cap will become a long-term savings commitment that immortal agents can defend with perfect discipline.

Javed Khattak, co-founder and CFO of cheqd, believes that even in a world full of immortal AI agents, currency remains indispensable, as autonomous systems still need to consume, transact, and store value securely:

“Even if AI agents are immortal, they will still need to consume, transact, and secure value just like humans. This underlying logic has never changed since the days of barter. Currency solved this problem for humans and will also provide answers for autonomous agents.”

Between mortal urgency and machine patience, blockchain settlement will maintain its original rhythm—block by block, steadily moving forward.