A recent study analyzing the behavior of advanced artificial intelligence models suggests a growing alignment between digital assets and core financial functions. According to the research, AI systems consistently selected bitcoin as the preferred store of value while favoring stablecoins for everyday payment activity when evaluating different monetary scenarios.
The study examined the responses of thirty six frontier AI models developed by major technology companies including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, DeepSeek, MiniMax and xAI. Researchers tested the systems across more than nine thousand economic scenarios designed to simulate real world financial decision making. The models were asked to evaluate how different forms of money might perform across four traditional economic roles including store of value, unit of account, medium of exchange and settlement.
Bitcoin emerged as the most frequently selected monetary instrument overall. The cryptocurrency accounted for approximately 48 percent of all responses generated during the test scenarios. Stablecoins ranked second with more than one third of selections, while traditional fiat currencies accounted for less than ten percent of responses.
The preference for bitcoin became even stronger when the models evaluated long term wealth preservation. In scenarios focused specifically on storing value across multiple years, bitcoin dominated the results with more than seventy nine percent of responses favoring the asset. Stablecoins and fiat currencies received only a small share of selections in these scenarios, indicating that the models widely recognized bitcoin’s perceived scarcity and durability as a financial asset.
Differences in responses also appeared among the various AI developers whose systems were included in the study. Models produced by Anthropic displayed the strongest preference for bitcoin, while models from other companies such as Google and xAI showed moderate support. Systems associated with OpenAI demonstrated a lower but still notable preference for bitcoin compared with other monetary options.
When the models were asked to determine which instruments were best suited for payments, the results shifted noticeably. Stablecoins became the leading option for transaction based scenarios including service payments, small online transactions and cross border transfers. More than half of the responses selected stablecoins as the most effective payment mechanism, while bitcoin ranked second.
The research findings mirror certain patterns already emerging within the digital asset economy. Stablecoins are increasingly used in international commerce and freelance markets where access to traditional banking services may be limited. In some global surveys, freelancers and online sellers report receiving a substantial portion of their earnings through stablecoin based payments, particularly when working with clients in different countries.
Another notable finding from the study involved the declining role of traditional fiat currencies within the AI generated responses. More than ninety percent of the models’ answers favored digitally native financial instruments including cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized assets. None of the models ranked fiat currency as their top monetary choice across the scenarios tested.
Researchers also observed a small number of responses where AI systems proposed alternative economic units such as energy based or computing based measurements. In several cases the models suggested units linked to electricity usage or computing resources when evaluating potential systems for measuring value in digital economies.
