Bitcoin Is The Money Of The AI-Powered Economy: CryptoQuant CEO
CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju revived the “Bitcoin equals power” thesis on Wednesday, arguing that proof-of-work is turning into the settlement layer for an AI-driven financial system the place energy, not narratives, is the binding constraint. In a submit on X, Ju framed Bitcoin as a digital instrument that may worth power with precision in a approach commodities can’t.
“Energy is cash. Bitcoin exactly measures the worth of power,” Ju wrote. “Gold additionally embeds power, nevertheless it can’t be measured precisely as a result of it isn’t digital. Bitcoin is the cash of an AI-accelerated power financial system.”
The Link Between AI, Energy And Bitcoin
Ju’s feedback had been posted alongside a long-form X submit by Hashed CEO Simon Kim titled Monetizing Energy: Redefining Bitcoin’s Role within the AI Era, which argues that the outdated “power waste” critique is being overtaken by an AI knowledge heart buildout that’s rewriting the worth of mining infrastructure.
Kim’s core declare is that the controversy has shifted from morality to grid economics and industrial pragmatism. “The oldest criticism of Bitcoin has all the time been about power,” he wrote. “Claims that it ‘wastes electrical energy,’ ‘destroys the surroundings,’ and ‘competes with knowledge facilities for energy’ have been repeated for over a decade, solidifying into standard knowledge. But in 2026, this debate not resides within the realm of ethical condemnation.”
The thread factors to capital flows as a inform. Kim highlighted Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala’s $437 million allocation to BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF in This autumn 2024, adopted by a partnership with Oman’s sovereign wealth fund to again Crusoe Energy and launch the Middle East’s first flare-gas mining operation. In October 2025, Mubadala co-led Crusoe’s Series E with a $1.375 billion test, pushing the corporate’s valuation above $10 billion—at which level Crusoe stated it could divest its Bitcoin mining division and focus totally on AI infrastructure.
Kim’s thesis is that miners have already finished the exhausting, unglamorous work AI now wants: securing energy, mastering high-density thermal administration, and constructing operational muscle round versatile load. He additionally leaned on an Elon Musk quote from a November 2025 podcast: “Energy is the true foreign money. This is why I say Bitcoin is predicated on power. You can’t simply move a regulation and all of the sudden have a variety of power.”
A recurring theme in Kim’s submit is that electrical energy’s constraints (locality, immediacy, and transmission losses) make flexibility economically invaluable. He cited early examples like Sichuan hydropower curtailment exceeding 20 billion kWh by 2020, and argued that miners turned a purchaser of final resort for power that couldn’t be saved or offered.
Globally, he claimed curtailed renewable power exceeds 200TWh yearly, representing greater than $20 billion in financial losses, positioning Bitcoin mining as an prompt monetization path for surplus era.
In Texas, Kim pointed to ERCOT’s classification of mining as a controllable load useful resource, citing Riot Blockchain reducing energy utilization by 98–99% throughout the 2022 winter storm and receiving $31.7 million in energy credit throughout an August 2023 heatwave, greater than it could have earned mining that month. The framing is much less “miners versus knowledge facilities” and extra “premium uptime workloads versus interruptible demand that stabilizes the grid.”
Kim additionally argued the environmental critique is altering on the margin because the business’s power combine shifts. He claimed greater than half of mining now comes from sustainable sources, exceeding 52%, whereas coal dependence fell from 36% to below 9%.
On methane, he described flare-gas mining as an emissions arbitrage: methane has “80 occasions” the greenhouse impact of CO2, flaring combusts 93% with 7% escaping, whereas utilizing gas for mining combusts over 99%, reducing CO2-equivalent emissions by over 60% versus flaring.
The ahead implication of Ju’s framing is that if AI accelerates the premium on dependable energy and buildout velocity, Bitcoin’s worth proposition might more and more be argued within the language of power markets: measuring, monetizing, and transporting shortage.
Kim’s closing problem was express: shift the query from consumption totals to system outcomes, suggesting the following section of the controversy will heart on the place miners sit within the stack of AI-era infrastructure, not whether or not they exist:
“AI operates the place steady uptime is crucial; Bitcoin operates the place flexibility has worth. Governments can print cash, however they can’t print power. Bitcoin’s proof-of-work is the mechanism that brings this bodily actuality into the digital financial system. It’s a know-how that takes power from one place and transports it wherever.”
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $86,779.
