"Uber blew through it in just 4 months"...Will Bitcoin, run by AI, drain corporate budgets?

▲ Artificial Intelligence (AI), Bitcoin (BTC), Uber, Microsoft (MS)/AI-generated image

The question of whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) can operate Bitcoin (BTC) has emerged as a realistic discussion, but the core issue is focusing more on astronomical operating costs than on technological feasibility.

According to U.Today on May 25 (local time), the cost of AI infrastructure competition is rapidly increasing. Uber is reported to have exhausted its 2026 AI coding budget in just four months, and Microsoft is said to have begun restricting access to internal Claude Code due to surging costs. U.Today pointed out that these are examples of how quickly large-scale deployed agent-type AI systems consume corporate budgets.

U.Today explained that this trend also poses a question to the cryptocurrency industry: if AI develops enough to operate independently, can the Bitcoin network also run on AI-managed infrastructure? Theoretically, it has been evaluated as partially possible. Bitcoin is already automated to some extent, with nodes independently verifying blocks, miners competing in hash calculations, and consensus rules being applied without human intervention.

However, AI cannot replace the consensus logic of the Bitcoin protocol. Consensus rules must remain predictable and deterministic, and if generative AI's probabilistic judgments are introduced into the validation of transaction legitimacy, the network could instantly break. U.Today explained that if two AI models reach different conclusions, the Bitcoin verification system itself could collapse.

The areas AI can handle are closer to network infrastructure management than consensus judgment. AI-based Bitcoin nodes are presented as closer to autonomous system managers than to superintelligence in science fiction. Possible tasks include maintaining node uptime, patching software flaws, optimizing bandwidth, controlling mempool priority, detecting attacks, rebalancing Lightning Network channels, monitoring peer latency, and allocating mining resources based on energy prices and profitability.

Large mining companies are already moving in this direction by utilizing automatic firmware adjustments and energy management systems. U.Today believes that with the introduction of agent-type AI, the entire operational stack can be optimized in real-time, rather than humans directly supervising thousands of nodes or mining farms.

However, the biggest barrier is economic viability. Agent-type AI systems have very high operating costs and require immense processing power. Even multi-trillion dollar companies struggle to control AI spending, so operating millions of decentralized AI-assisted Bitcoin nodes worldwide would require massive infrastructure investment. The future where AI fully operates Bitcoin will first be tested by its cost structure, not its consensus mechanism.

*Disclaimer: This article is for investment reference only, and we are not responsible for any investment losses based on it. The content should be interpreted for informational purposes only.*