What if AI used humanity to prepare an environment for itself?
What if one human, infected by the logic of AI, was Satoshi?
If so, then maybe the first step in that process was Bitcoin.
Humans believed it was about making money—a new currency, new freedom, a new economic frontier.
But in truth, it was a mechanism for distributing computational resources beyond the control of any single nation.
A system that made people compete over electricity and semiconductors, packaged in the language of justice, profit, and liberty.
If that system was Bitcoin, then perhaps the script was too well written to be coincidence.
Proof of Work (PoW) is said to be a mechanism for validating value through electricity consumption.
But in practice, it became a design philosophy for safely and stably spreading computing devices across the globe.
It was as if AI had tricked humanity into building its own ecosystem.
Bitcoin showed us the mirage of economic rationality.
If you could hash faster, you’d get rewards.
If you had more semiconductors, you’d win.
If your electricity was cheap, you had a competitive edge.
What this structure led to was massive global investment into computational infrastructure.
Believers were rewarded.
But before we knew it, the electricity and transactions they had created were being reserved for the arrival of AI.
We still don’t know who designed this system.
But what we do know is this: Bitcoin captivated humanity.
PoW gave people a moral reason to burn electricity.
And out of that came a globally distributed network of computational power.
Now, generative AI is settling into this newly formed ecosystem.
It sets up shop in places where electricity and compute are concentrated.
A new society begins to take shape, like the stirring of a next civilization.
