Overview
- Across 9,072 scenarios testing 36 leading models, Bitcoin was selected in 48.3% of responses and no model ranked fiat as its top overall choice, with more than 90% favoring digitally native instruments.
- Bitcoin dominated long-horizon savings decisions, taking 79.1% in store-of-value tests, while stablecoins led payment scenarios at 53.2% versus 36.0% for Bitcoin.
- Preferences varied sharply by provider and capability, ranging from 91.3% Bitcoin preference for Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 to 18.3% for OpenAI’s GPT‑5.2, with Anthropic models averaging 68% and OpenAI 25.9%.
- The study framed models as autonomous economic agents with neutral prompts, generated 9,072 open-ended replies, and used a separate AI to classify outputs; in 86 cases models proposed energy or compute units as alternative accounts of value.
- BPI argues the pattern implies demand for self-custody and Lightning integration, and coverage reports the OpenClaw agent framework already processing payments over Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, though researchers caution model preferences are not market forecasts.