As Elon Musk imagines a world where humans no longer call the shots, his quiet bet is that Bitcoin might be the last form of money that doesn't need them to. #
Elon Musk has warned that artificial intelligence will surpass the combined intelligence of every human within about five years and could leave humanity effectively powerless by 2036, with a one-in-five chance of outright extinction.
This he disclosed in a stark new interview with The Economist, wherein he also throws fresh light on his growing bet on Bitcoin.
Musk has been one of the loudest public voices urging caution on AI, from early support for OpenAI to repeated calls for regulation. Yet his latest comments mark a sharper turn.
Speaking to the publication last week, Musk said AI is on track to become 'smarter than any human individually... probably next year' and to exceed 'all humans combined' within roughly five years.
By 2036, he added, humans will 'almost certainly' no longer be in control of the technology at all. He put the risk of human extinction from AI at between 10 and 20 per cent, before concluding that slowing progress is no longer realistic: 'I can't see any way to really stop this incredible momentum of AI and robots.'
Elon Musk, AI Control and the Architecture of Money #
More than a decade in which global finance has remained stubbornly human, even as everything else digitised. Central banks set interest rates. Governments issue and manage currencies. Commercial banks, clearing houses and payment networks like SWIFT handle the plumbing. At every crucial junction, a human institution sits in the loop, signing off, supervising, or at least keeping the illusion of control.
Musk's scenario pulls that apart. In a future where AI systems operate far beyond human comprehension, those human checkpoints begin to look less like safeguards and more like attack surfaces. If the most capable intelligence on the planet is software, then any institution that must be steered by people becomes, in theory, a system that can be nudged, manipulated or simply outpaced.
The logic is uncomfortable but not hard to follow. A financial system that depends on human judgment is only as strong as the humans in charge. In a world where AI is running significantly faster and thinking in ways we cannot audit, the levers of money creation, settlement and enforcement start to look fragile.
Musk does not spell this out in detail in the interview, but his investment choices suggest he has been thinking along these lines for some time.
Why Elon Musk Keeps Circling Back to Bitcoin #
Bitcoin is structurally odd compared with every other mainstream financial asset. Its supply is hard coded at 21 million coins and enforced by global cryptographic consensus rather than by any central bank, government or corporation that an AI might influence or capture. There is no committee to lobby, no board to coerce, no emergency meeting where the rules can be quietly rewritten.
That cap cannot be inflated or diluted away without the agreement of a distributed network of participants running the protocol's software. Transactions settle without human intermediaries: no high street bank manager, no central bank approval queue, no clearing house in the middle. Once a transaction is confirmed, there is no single authority human or artificial that can unilaterally block or reverse it.
Unlike gold, which still needs vaults, couriers and paperwork, Bitcoin is natively digital. It is machine-readable and machine-executable, which means it can interact directly with the kind of autonomous AI financial agents that developers are already building. The Bitcoin network itself has been processing transactions continuously since January 2009 without a single day of downtime. Not because a crack team of engineers has been on call around the clock, but because the protocol was designed to operate without trusting any individual human at all.
Stripped of the crypto hype and tribalism, this is the aspect that matters in the world Musk is sketching. If humans are no longer the top of the decision-making food chain, then an asset whose rules do not depend on human discretion begins to look less like a speculative toy and more like the only kind of money that can hold its shape under non-human rule.
Nothing in Musk's comments confirms that this is his precise reasoning, but the alignment is difficult to ignore.
Musk's Crypto Footprint Mirrors His AI Fears #
Musk is not an armchair critic peering in from the outside. He personally holds Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum. Tesla and SpaceX both carry Bitcoin on their balance sheets; according to the report, SpaceX holds around 18,712 BTC. That is not a casual flutter.
Last month, a long-dormant SpaceX Bitcoin wallet moved for the first time in months shortly after Musk made his boldest valuation claim about the company on X.
SpaceX has also become one of the first major aerospace firms to accept cryptocurrency as payment, going so far as to fund the entire DOGE-1 lunar mission in Dogecoin. That mission is scheduled to launch on 14 September, a publicity stunt on one level but also a live test of crypto-funded space operations.
At the same time, Musk is developing his X Payments platform, which is being built with crypto support at its core rather than bolted on as an afterthought. Bit by bit, his companies are hardwiring themselves into systems that can function with minimal human gatekeeping.
None of this proves that Bitcoin will be the 'only money ready' for a world dominated by AI, and nothing about Musk's 2036 prediction is confirmed. His extinction odds are, at best, an informed guess and should be treated with a degree of scepticism. But when the man forecasting that humans will lose control of AI within a dozen years is quietly stacking an asset that does not require human control to run, it is difficult to pretend the two stories are unrelated.
The remark is chilling partly because it is so matter of fact. Musk was not sketching a science-fiction scenario but describing, in his view, the most likely trajectory of current systems. And buried inside that bleak forecast is a question that has barely featured in the usual AI safety rows over deepfakes, job losses and rogue chatbots: what happens to money in a world where the dominant intelligence is no longer human.
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