There were a few good points distributed over many answers and comments, so I’ll collate them here. I’ll ignore answers to other questions, such as “Is it likely that cryptocurrencies will get big?” I’ve paraphrased all of these.
Question
Bitcoin is not actually deflationary by design but its popularity is increasing faster than its supply. That will stall at some point, at which its value will not grow anymore. That’s probably going to be 100 years from now, so maybe not relevant to AI, but a cyberpunk scenario is unlikely to be stable that way unless a more deflationary asset becomes dominant. (H/t Olomana)
A 1–2 OOM increase in market cap may not be enough for crypto to have much impact on society. It would still just be one more biggish assets class. There is not that much value in currencies that becoming as big as all currencies combined would have these vast societal effects. (H/t romeostevensit)
Question
Proof of work generates demand for GPUs and ASICs, allowing them to be produced at greater scale (and maybe smoothing out demand volatility). That hardware is also useful for AI, so proof of work at least may accelerate AI. (H/t Gerald Monroe) Bitcoin is posed to remain dominant, and it may be too conservative to switch away from proof of work. (That leave the avenue of promoting non-PoW blockchains so that tokens on those blockchains can displace Bitcoin to some extend.)
There were a few good points distributed over many answers and comments, so I’ll collate them here. I’ll ignore answers to other questions, such as “Is it likely that cryptocurrencies will get big?” I’ve paraphrased all of these.
Question
Bitcoin is not actually deflationary by design but its popularity is increasing faster than its supply. That will stall at some point, at which its value will not grow anymore. That’s probably going to be 100 years from now, so maybe not relevant to AI, but a cyberpunk scenario is unlikely to be stable that way unless a more deflationary asset becomes dominant. (H/t Olomana)
A 1–2 OOM increase in market cap may not be enough for crypto to have much impact on society. It would still just be one more biggish assets class. There is not that much value in currencies that becoming as big as all currencies combined would have these vast societal effects. (H/t romeostevensit)
Question
Proof of work generates demand for GPUs and ASICs, allowing them to be produced at greater scale (and maybe smoothing out demand volatility). That hardware is also useful for AI, so proof of work at least may accelerate AI. (H/t Gerald Monroe) Bitcoin is posed to remain dominant, and it may be too conservative to switch away from proof of work. (That leave the avenue of promoting non-PoW blockchains so that tokens on those blockchains can displace Bitcoin to some extend.)
Did I forget any?