AI Creates Abundance, BTC Creates Scarcity: What Web3 Truly Changes Is Not Production Relations, But Value Relations

AI amplifies production with infinite supply, while Web3 reshapes value relations, and Bitcoin establishes a foundation of scarce neutral property in the digital age.

Written by: BITWU.ETH

Today, I saw a statement shared by Mr. Cai Wensheng: AI changes productivity, Web3 changes production relations, and the most valuable asset in the future will be data!

I stared at this sentence for a long time.

Because it precisely hits a question I have been pondering repeatedly lately:

In the social changes over the next ten or even twenty years, what roles do AI, Web3, and Bitcoin play?

I mostly agree with Mr. Cai Wensheng's statement. However, there is one place where I increasingly want to change a word: Web3 may not really be changing "production relations"; it is more likely changing "value relations".

These two terms seem to differ by just a few characters, but the underlying logic is completely different. When you continue to push down the line of "value relations", you will discover a very interesting connection:

AI is responsible for creating productivity, Crypto is responsible for carrying value flow, and Bitcoin is responsible for creating the most scarce thing in the digital world.

This is also why I have recently begun to rethink Bitcoin;

In the past, we always referred to it as "digital gold".

But entering the AI era, I increasingly feel that this definition may not be enough:

Bitcoin may be transitioning from "digital gold" to a globally neutral digital property right.

Why do I say this?

Let’s break it down step by step.

1️⃣ AI Changes Productivity:

What is currently obvious is that AI transforms many cognitive tasks that could only be performed by humans into a software capability that is close to infinite replication.

For example: writing code, research, design, customer service, investment research, marketing, legal texts, data analysis, enterprise management, and the marginal costs of many jobs will continue to decline.

The industrial revolution reduced the cost of physical labor, the internet reduced the cost of information dissemination, and AI reduces the cost of intellectual labor.

2️⃣ The Combination of AI and Crypto:

Personally, I feel that saying Web3 changes production relations has been a long-standing logic, but it feels a bit like self-indulgence within our industry; there hasn’t been much change in ten years.

The vast majority of companies' internal databases, ERP, CRM, and trade secrets have no need to go on-chain. Production relations do not need to be redone with blockchain, nor do they need to issue a useless token.

I believe Web3 changes value relations!

What are value relations?

For example, how assets are confirmed, how value is settled, and how benefits are distributed, are basically related to value and money.

Do you see it? These things align most closely with what?

The AI Agent economy.

The current consensus is that in the future internet, many participants may not be humans, but AI Agents;

Agents will definitely find clients, purchase APIs, call computing power, make payments, sign contracts, invest, and settle on their own.

At this point, a very interesting question arises: AI does not have an ID card, nor does it necessarily have a bank account, but it can completely own a Wallet.

Therefore, Crypto may naturally become a set of financial infrastructure for the machine economy. So I believe the true intersection of AI × Crypto is definitely not the long-claimed change in production relations and "AI concept tokens", but rather machine payments, stablecoins, wallets, identities, smart contracts, and settlement networks.

This is what I mean when I say Web3 changes not production relations, but value relations, and specifically the value relation network of AI AGENTS!

3️⃣ What Value Does Bitcoin Have in the AI Era?

This is also a place I have been thinking deeply about recently:

1) The stronger AI becomes, the clearer the logic of Bitcoin's existence may be.

Because AI creates abundance, Bitcoin creates scarcity: AI cannot generate the 21,000,001st Bitcoin; after entering the AI era, the credible digital scarcity will become even more prominent.

2) From digital gold to a neutral digital property right carrier in the AI era.

BlackRock's current description of Bitcoin is also very close to this framework: it defines BTC as a scarce, non-sovereign, decentralized global asset.

First, Bitcoin has an important layer that gold does not:

Gold is only an asset, while Bitcoin has "asset + ownership system + settlement system".

Assuming you own one kilogram of gold, the gold itself is your asset, but to prove it is yours, transport it to the United States, sell it to a stranger, and complete the delivery, you need a whole set of external systems: for example, you need banks, logistics, warehouses, appraisals, exchanges, and legal contracts.

BTC is different.

Within the Bitcoin network: who has the dominion, who can transfer; who transfers to whom is jointly verified by the entire network; the settlement record itself is also part of the system.

Satoshi Nakamoto's core breakthrough in the white paper was not inventing a rising coin, but solving how two strangers on the internet can complete value transfer without a trusted third party.

The core of the white paper's original text is to replace trusted third parties with cryptographic proof.

So we need to understand why gold solves for scarce assets, while Bitcoin solves for "scarce assets + native ownership in the digital world". This is the underlying logic of that statement.

Secondly, we need to understand what digital property rights are!

For example: think about what the 1 million USD in your bank account is. Strictly speaking, it is: the bank owes you 1 million USD, and what you own is a claim, a debt right.

Bitcoin is different; it is a digitally native property right.

The Bitcoin network records UTXO, and the private key gives you the authority to spend those UTXOs. So the saying: Not your keys, not your coins, has a very deep philosophical meaning behind it.

It connects digital identity, asset control, and cryptography for the first time.

Finally, let’s clarify why AI makes this matter suddenly more important?

Earlier, we mentioned that AI is changing the "scarcity structure" of the digital world, for example, all digital content will become increasingly cheap. When everything becomes non-scarce, people will need to seek scarce things.

Additionally, the AI era is akin to when Watt's great steam engine was first invented, and the wealth of the world began to grow massively; the value of gold will also start to rise significantly. The massive growth in the digital age will surely captivate everyone with this scarcity and neutral wealth.

So I say:

Gold is a globally neutral property created by industrial civilization;

Bitcoin may be a globally neutral property created by digital civilization.

3) Stablecoins handle spending, Bitcoin handles saving.

In the previous section, I mentioned that the value economy of Agents needs Crypto as an intermediary. The AI Agents will definitely use stablecoins like USDC, USDT, or various future Tokenized Deposits for payments because they are price-stable.

And what will BTC become?

Reserve assets, long-term value storage assets, collateral, globally neutral assets.

Just like in the real world: the dollar handles settlement, gold handles reserves.

In the future, the digital world combined with AI may become: Stablecoins handle settlement, BTC handles reserves.

Of course, the two will not be completely distinct, but I personally believe this is a very understandable framework.

Finally, I want to remind everyone:

Do not blindly think that the future trend is a direction that can be infinitely invested in. I do not know what will happen in between, but ultimately, the value that truly settles will certainly only be a very small number, such as BTC, stablecoins, a few core public chains, trading/settlement infrastructure, and RWA protocols.

In the future, it is very likely that a result will occur: Web3 will permeate the entire financial society, permeate the entire AI system, but more than 90% of the tokens that exist today will still go to zero; these two things can completely happen simultaneously.

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