A machine that never gets old
Imagine a wallet that never gets old. No heirs, no estates, no retirement dates, machines add satellites, roll UTXOs, and bid the lowest price for centuries.
By 2125, its outstanding balance will exceed most national debt. The only priority is to continue to exist. Somewhere along the line, a miner’s quiet, patient heartbeat is included in the block, moving the chain forward.
Bitcoin’s design assumes the death of its users.
AI agents will not, and cohorts of long-lived or autonomous agents with near-zero discounts will treat savings, fees, custody, and governance as open-ended timeline problems.
Money built for mortal balance sheets meets users who never close their books.
Matty Greenspan, founder and CEO of Quantum Economics, argues that human finances are fundamentally shaped by mortality, and that will change when an immortal AI begins compounding Bitcoin forever.
“Human finance is built on simple constraints, and life ends. That creates time preferences, debt markets, and cycles of spending. An AI with an infinite lifespan will not share that constraint and will forever complicate it.”
When such agents choose Bitcoin as their reserve asset, they become an unstoppable gravitational well of capital.
Over time, Bitcoin will cease to be a human monetary system and become the infrastructure of a generational machine economy.
Death was always Satoshi’s hidden assumption, but he lived in a world where AI dominance was still limited to sci-fi thrillers. ”
Pressure Map: Where Machine Patience Impacts Bitcoin
| domain | Agent behavior with zero discount | bitcoin surface |
|---|---|---|
| fee bidding | Wait for the low rate window. Coordination of bulk payments | Mempool dynamics, miner template selection, and revenue cyclicality. |
| UTXO management | Many small UTXOs to protect your privacy. slow integration | UTXO set size, dustproof/standard, package relay |
| custody | Multisig vault, time lock, autorotation | Vault/covenant design, opsec standards |
| layer 2 | Long-lived channels. Poor closure. stable funding | Routing fluidity, rebalancing cadence, watchtowers |
| governance pressures | Economic weight without “voting” | Pricing policy defaults, relay policies, and infrastructure sponsorship |
Time priority for fee markets
A near-immortal spender clears the minimum amount. They constantly set prices for memory pools, swap packages and adjust consolidation when cheaper periods open up.
If such demand is high enough, miners will see steady low bids during off-peak periods and temporary settlement waves when agents roll UTXOs. That response is economics, not voting. The template adapts to include lower-cost packages when blocks allow, and leaves room for surges in the event of a spike.
Ahmad Shadid, founder of the O Foundation, claims that near-immortal AI agents will continually tweak commission bids in real time, creating long periods of low activity punctuated by sudden bursts of payments.
“Intense payment bursts or long periods of low activity can result in highly optimized fees.
The AI system is highly sensitive to the trade-off between fees and confirmations, bidding as much as necessary to liquidate and constantly re-prices in real-time. ”
Menpur Mathematics Overview
| metric | value |
|---|---|
| integrated size | 1,000 P2WPKH input × ~68 vB = ~68,000 vB; + output/overhead ≈ ~68,100 vB |
| Peak hour charges (30 sat/vB) | ~2,043,000 satellites |
| Trough charge (2 Sat/vB) | ~136,200 satellites |
| Estimated savings from waiting | ≈ 93% per consolidation. A batch of 10 like this scales approximately linearly |
| implication | Immortal Treasury locks in revenue troughs while leaving room for human surges |
Privacy, coin management, UTXO sets
The patient agent prioritizes a large number of small UTXOs to reduce the risk of clustering and only consolidates when prices drop. While this makes sense locally, it extends the global live state that all full nodes must maintain.
Pruning removes history and does not remove consumable output. The pressure is on non-monetary measures: dust/standardity thresholds, package relays for secure integration, conventions/vault design to limit fan-out.
Nexo Communications manager Magdalena Hristova claimed that once “immortal” AI agents start saving in Bitcoin, the network will not break. Instead, they will eventually encounter economic agents whose time axis coincides with their own.
“Even if an immortal AI agent starts saving in Bitcoin, the system will not break and it will eventually meet an economic entity that matches its own timeline.
These factors stabilize the ecosystem rather than distort it. They will likely become the most consistent fee payers in history and maintain on-chain security for centuries.
AI agents may start issuing new account units, bits, computational credits, and storage time backed by BTC, much like the dollar was once backed by gold. ”
Humans depend on wills and executors. Machine treasury relies on redundant hardware, decentralized signers, rate-limited vaults, and timelocks that delay disbursements for review.
Multisig becomes a procedure, not an emergency. As the key loss propensity of such an agent decreases toward zero, the background supply reduction diminishes to a limit.
Matti Tokenomics, co-founder of Legion.cc, says Bitcoin’s deflationary dynamics depend on a significant loss of humanity, and argues that an “immortal AI” economy could change that premise.
“BTC is deflationary because humans lose the keys, but the theoretically perfect, immortal AI will never lose the keys, so the supply of BTC is stable.”
Layer where commerce takes place
Lightning and L2 absorb less urgent flows. Immortal counterparties are near-perfect tenants. It keeps the channel funded, endures long rebalancing cycles, and is rarely shut down.
This can lock up liquidity while mitigating route churn, requiring more aggressive rebalancing by human operators with frequent settlements.
In parallel, agents will trade on programmable rails and regulated stablecoins, treating BTC as collateral and reserves.
Jamie Elkaleh, CMO of Bitget Wallet, argued that Bitcoin could be an ideal long-term store of value because AI agents like predictability.
“AI agents don’t age, don’t retire, and don’t spend like humans do, so they end up saving forever.
They prefer a system that never surprises them, and Bitcoin’s rules rarely change, making predictability more valuable. Instead of upgrading Bitcoin, AI keeps the base layer frozen and builds new functionality on top of it.
AI will likely treat BTC like long-term storage and use faster, more programmable currencies for actual transactions. ”
Navin Vesanayagam, chief brain at IQ and co-founder of KRWQ, said a possible end state is for AI agents to primarily trade in regulated stablecoins, with Bitcoin acting as a long-term reserve asset.
“Agents will be operating almost entirely on regulated stablecoins, but over time we will be able to obtain a multi-stablecoin operating system for AI commerce, where Bitcoin acts as a long-term reserve asset.
Even if these agents operate independently, the value they create is still returned to people. Humans will own economic rights to these agents. ”
Matty Tokenomics gave a more candid view of what this could lead to.
“Our immortal AI overlords will exchange data with each other.”
Charles d’Haussy, CEO of dYdX Foundation, positioned Bitcoin as 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, coordination, and day-to-day operations.
AI will likely enhance, rather than challenge, Bitcoin’s existing rules. AI works best based on a fixed set of rules.
The 21 million supply cap is likely to become even more important in an AI-dominated future. ”
Miner strategy and non-voting
The pool pre-commits block space for low-cost packages during slack epochs and batch consolidations, allowing you to adjust orphan risk as your template grows.
Once the agency’s finance department adjusts, the revenue will be more regular and not from pure spikes, but it will still collide with headcount spikes around tax days and exchange incidents. None of these touch proof of work or caps. It’s about optimizing your wallet based on fixed rules.
Shadid argued that while Bitcoin’s core rules are difficult to change, its social layer can evolve in response to changes in economic actors.
“Bitcoin’s core rules of proof-of-work and the 21 million cap remain nearly impossible to change, and its social strata, narratives, norms, and fee policies can shift in response to changes in economic actors.
AI can influence Bitcoin through client selection, miner interaction, and economic weight rather than voting.
They may value tokens for compute, energy, and resources more fundamentally than money, and BTC will be one of many collateral layers. ”
repulsion, warning, rebuttal
Skeptics warn that security budgets and programmable stacks could draw agents elsewhere.
Joel Valenzuela, a core member of Dash DAO, rejected the idea that Bitcoin is built to serve “immortal” agents indefinitely.
“A long, indestructible time horizon actually doesn’t favor Bitcoin very much. The network faces sustainability and security budget issues. An indestructible timeline would hold either the 21 million limit or the block size limit, but not both.”
Jonathan Schemoul, lead contributor at LibertAI, echoed that view, arguing that research remains focused on Ethereum and is unlikely to move to Bitcoin anytime soon.
“The project already uses LibertAI for AI agents and Bitcoin payments. I don’t see why the 21 million cap doesn’t apply, but it has nothing to do with AI agents.
For now, all development is done on Ethereum and cannot be run on Bitcoin today.
This may change, but for now the direction is not to use Bitcoin. ”
Practical notes: Hardware breaks, software rots, budgets end, and the legal system intervenes. Bitcoin privacy is not by default. Commercial agents may prefer systems with native confidentiality.
Creative Strategist and Content Manager The Cryptoly says:
“AI agents will use whatever they are coded to use. I don’t believe in the immortality of AI agents, because technology is something that happens, and we don’t even know what’s going to happen in the next five minutes, let alone forever.
Without a way to make Bitcoin transactions private by default, Bitcoin could lose its status as a pioneer currency as government involvement and oversight increases.
It would be dangerous to view Bitcoin as a be-all and end-all golden calf, but until a harder currency is developed, and it is possible to develop a harder digital currency that is natively private, Bitcoin will continue to play an important role. ”
The social aspect doesn’t go away. Economic weight manifests itself in fee elasticity and miner adjustments, not forum posts.
Hristova warned that an “immortal AI” hoarding Bitcoin could outlast human time preferences and reshape the market by steadily increasing its economic power.
“Immortal AI hoarding Bitcoin would mean the death of human time preference in investing. They would accumulate BTC indefinitely, making Bitcoin even more deflationary and slowly absorbing economic power simply by outliving us.”
Wealth equals power, and immortal beings with perfect discipline will eventually control governance, including blockchain.
The real threat is that AI is building its own non-human economic consensus around Bitcoin, shaping markets and incentives in ways that benefit the immortal being. ”
Mamadou Kwizim Touré, founder and CEO of Ubuntu Group, warned that Bitcoin’s human-centered design could break down if AI agents start adjusting and optimizing over time.
“Bitcoin was designed by humans and for humans. Human urgency and impatience will no longer matter.
Today, those who need liquidity will find that prices are rising. Proof of work is independent of who is performing it: human, machine, or a combination thereof. Perhaps they will see Bitcoin as one tool in a larger kit.
If these agents find a way to work together, there is no need for a trustless system. ”
Policy instruments (not financial rules)
Let’s take a closer look at the knobs that are important when your marginal users are processes.
| lever | what to do | why is it important |
|---|---|---|
| dust and standardity | Gating micro-UTXO creation and relaying through policy thresholds. | Reduce UTXO bloat and set the minimum viable output size for your network. |
| package relay | Allows bundled transactions to be relayed/confirmed together. | Enables secure integration even in price valleys. Increased inclusion for low-cost parents. |
| Covenant/Vault | Enforce spending paths and rate limits through scripts/policies. | Limit worst-case fanout and increase machine control without increasing spending. |
| Pruning and Live Sets | Pruning removes historical blocks. Live UTXO sets remain in memory. | Node cost pressure is caused by UTXO growth, not historical size. This is a remarkable live resource. |
Soil is finite. When unit granularity becomes tighter, rebasing occurs at the interface (decimal places) rather than monetary policy. This maintains 21M while improving the split.
Mati Tokenomics argued that if Bitcoin’s finite decimal granularity were to become a binding constraint upon mass adoption, the system could respond with nominal “rebasing” or stock split-style adjustments without changing the underlying economics.
“Eventually, when adoption reaches stupid levels, BTC has a finite number of decimal places, so if the number of machines that want to own one SAT exceeds the number of SATs in existence, some kind of rebase or stock split will be necessary, nominally increasing the total supply of BTC units.
It’s interesting that this can be achieved by either keeping the same number of decimal places and increasing the supply to 210 million, or keeping the supply at 21 million and adding more decimal places, even though the economics are essentially the same. ”
Counterfeiters to watch out for
| signal | Threshold/observed value | what it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| Payment venue | More than 80% of agent-brokered commerce in private L2/alt-L1 continues for more than 12 months as BTC reserves stagnate | “AI finance in Bitcoin” will weaken. Agents prefer non-BTC rails for activity and reserve. |
| trough depth | Trough charges do not deepen over time despite observable agent batching | The “eternal waiter” is not a material thing. Machine patience does not shape the fee market. |
| Key loss trends | No degradation in valid key loss compared to human baseline (due to on-chain heuristics) | “Immortal custody” has not yet been achieved. Supply depletion remains human. |
| Node resource pressure | Node cost curve outweighs mitigations (dust limits, package relay improvements) | The pressure on the UTXO becomes prohibitive. Broad participation is threatened. |
equilibrium
Beyond these paths, Bitcoin’s base layer is likely to look more like a mechanical treasury payment layer than a payment rail.
Activities move to a layer where programmability and privacy meet engineering needs. The 21 million cap is centered around a long-term savings promise that non-humans can keep with perfect discipline.
Javed Khattak, co-founder and CFO of cheqd, argued that even in a world of “immortal” AI agents, money will still be essential as autonomous systems will still need to consume, trade, and safely store value.
“Even if AI agents don’t die, they, like humans, need to consume, trade, and secure value. The basic logic hasn’t changed since barter. Money solved it for humans, and it will solve it for autonomous agents as well.”
Between the crisis of death and the perseverance of the machine, the reconciliation maintains the same rhythm. one block at a time.