AI Study: Stablecoins Dominate Payments, Bitcoin Leads in Store of Value

A recent study reported by Decrypt examined how leading AI models evaluate monetary systems in simulated economic scenarios. The Bitcoin Policy Institute tested 36 AI models from major labs including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, xAI, and MiniMax.

The results showed that 22 out of 36 models selected Bitcoin as their preferred store of value, while none chose fiat currency as their first option. However, the study revealed a more nuanced outcome: Stablecoins dominated in payment and settlement functions.

According to the findings, stablecoins were chosen 53.2% of the time for medium-of-exchange roles and 43% for settlement tasks, outperforming Bitcoin in these transactional categories. Bitcoin, while favored for long-term value preservation, scored lower in short-term payment use cases due to volatility concerns.

The research suggests that AI systems naturally differentiate monetary roles:

• Bitcoin for long-term value storage

• Stablecoins for payments and settlement

• Fiat as a value reference

Analysts note that as AI agents increasingly participate in economic activity, stablecoins may become essential for automated, machine-to-machine transactions due to their price stability and programmability.

While the study does not predict market outcomes, it highlights a key trend: in AI-driven economic models, Stablecoins are emerging as practical infrastructure for digital payments, while Bitcoin retains its appeal as a scarcity-based reserve asset.