Bitcoin making sense - for Humans and Robots

Bitcoin making sense – for Humans and Robots

Posted on by Toma Velev

Bitcoin does make sense – both technically and economically. But whether it makes sense for someone to use or invest in it depends on the context.

1. The Core Idea (Why Bitcoin Exists)

Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The goal was to create:

  • Digital money without banks
  • A system where no single authority controls the currency
  • A public ledger (called the Blockchain) that everyone can verify

Key properties:

  • Max supply: 21 million BTC
  • Transactions are verified by a decentralized network
  • Anyone can send money globally without permission

2. Why Some People Think It Makes Sense

Supporters see Bitcoin as:

Digital gold

  • Limited supply
  • Resistant to inflation

Censorship-resistant money

  • Governments or banks cannot easily block transactions

Borderless payments

  • Send money anywhere without intermediaries

Some large companies have adopted it, like:

3. The Criticism

Critics argue that Bitcoin has problems:

Price volatility

  • It can gain or lose huge value quickly.

Slow transactions

  • Compared to systems like Visa. This is only true for the base – layer 1. If people start using lightning network – the layer 2 – it has the best of both worlds.

Energy consumption

  • Mining uses large amounts of electricity. But how much time and energy does the banking system consume? Nobody says that. Now is so obvious – computers does consume energy – in the AI niche.

Speculation

  • Many people buy it mainly hoping the price goes up.

4. Technically Speaking (for a developer)

Under the hood it is interesting because it combines:

  • Cryptographic Hash Function
  • Proof of Work
  • Public‑key Cryptography
  • A distributed consensus network

From a computer science perspective, it’s a very clever distributed system.

✅ Short answer:

  • Technically: Yes, it makes a lot of sense.
  • Economically: Depends on your beliefs about money and adoption.

Does it make sense for a macnine / AI / Agent

Bitcoin actually makes more sense for machines in some ways than the traditional banking system. 🤖💰. This is one of the reasons many technologists think crypto could be important for an AI-driven economy.

1. Traditional Banking Is Not Machine-Friendly

Systems like Visa, Mastercard, or bank transfers were built for humans, not autonomous software.

Problems for AI agents:

Identity requirements

Banks require:

  • legal identity
  • KYC verification
  • government documents

An AI agent cannot easily open a bank account.

Human approval

Payments often require:

  • authentication
  • fraud checks
  • business accounts
  • manual compliance

This breaks fully autonomous transactions.

Geographic restrictions

Traditional banking depends on:

  • countries
  • currencies
  • banking hours
  • settlement delays

Machines operating globally don’t fit into this structure.

2. Bitcoin Is Machine-Native Money

**Bitcoin works differently.

An AI only needs:

  • a private key
  • internet access

That’s it.

No:

  • bank
  • passport
  • permission

Machines can generate wallets instantly.

This relies on Public-key Cryptography, where ownership of funds is controlled by cryptographic keys instead of identity.

3. Autonomous Payments

An AI agent could:

  • charge users automatically
  • pay APIs
  • rent compute
  • pay for storage
  • pay other AI agents

Example flow:

AI agent → request data
AI agent → sends micro-payment
service → responds

This creates a machine-to-machine economy.

4. Micropayments

Traditional systems can’t handle tiny payments.

For example:

  • $0.0001 per API call
  • $0.001 per dataset access

Fees in systems like PayPal make this impossible.

But crypto systems (especially **Bitcoin with the Lightning Network) enable instant micropayments.

5. Smart Agent Economies

Many researchers imagine networks of AI agents that:

  • hire each other
  • buy services
  • sell computation
  • trade data

This requires programmable money.

Crypto is the first system where money behaves like an API.

6. Why Tech Leaders Talk About This

People like:

  • Balaji Srinivasan
  • Vitalik Buterin
  • Naval Ravikant

often argue that cryptocurrency is the natural payment layer for AI and the internet.

7. The Big Idea

Category Description
Banking Humans
Credit cards Consumers
Crypto Internet / machines

So for autonomous AI agents, something like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is often far more compatible than traditional banking. I’ve put together some thoughts in my Bitcoin Philosophy Booklet https://programtom.com/dev/product/bitcoin-philosophy-strengths-weaknesses/.