A new study from the Bitcoin Policy Institute found that leading AI models favor Bitcoin and other digitally native forms of money over fiat currencies in simulated economic decision-making. The research tested 36 frontier AI models across 9,072 controlled prompts, with scenarios designed to avoid steering the models toward any specific currency.
Bitcoin ranked first across the full set of monetary choices
Published at MoneyForAI.org, the study showed Bitcoin as the single most preferred monetary instrument overall, accounting for 48.3% of all responses. Its lead expanded sharply in long-term value preservation scenarios, where 79.1% of responses picked Bitcoin as the preferred store of value.
The researchers said the pattern appears when models reason through monetary traits such as scarcity, neutrality, and durability. In those cases, they tend to converge on decentralized digital assets. The paper also noted that some models, when not limited to existing currencies, suggested alternative units based on energy or compute.
Stablecoins were favored for payments, while Bitcoin dominated savings logic
The results also showed a clear split in use cases. Stablecoins were more often selected for short-term transactions and payments, while Bitcoin was more frequently chosen as a savings vehicle or reserve asset. The distinction was consistent across the tested prompts.
Across the broader dataset, more than 91% of responses favored digitally native money, including Bitcoin and stablecoins, over traditional fiat. The authors said the findings may matter for the design of autonomous AI agents and machine-to-machine economies, where digital-native money could be structurally better suited than legacy financial systems.