If you’ve scrolled through CT at all in the past few months, you’ve probably noticed the wave of massive investments and outlandish economic projections surrounding AI. If not, let me help you out. The $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure project, Big Tech’s $325 billion in AI spending, and PwC’s projection of AI contributing $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030 are some of the recent headlines that lead me to believe we’re approaching a future where AI dominates economic activity.

Ambient positions itself as the natural unit of value for this future economy by directly representing machine intelligence and addressing the flaws of two of its major predecessors: (1) Bitcoin’s computationally expensive but useless proof-of-work and (2) Bittensor’s fragmented marketplace approach to AI computation. I’m by no means a $BTC or $TAO bear (and am not saying Ambient will replace either of them), but in this article I’ll discuss the reasons why Ambient could perhaps create a form of currency more suitable for our intelligence-driven future.

Limitations of $BTC and $TAO

Bitcoin is the consensus bet for a reason. It’s the most decentralized, has firs