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Alyse Killeen at Stillmark explains Bitcoin’s strategic role in shaping the future of AI and the energy transition
Bitcoin (BTC) has seen its value skyrocket since beginning the year at approximately $44K, but the rise of the underlying technologies, the bitcoin blockchain and bitcoin’s payment network, the Lightning Network, to broader market relevance began years before.
Bitcoin, once perceived as a niche digital currency, is increasingly becoming a relevant player in global technological and economic transformations. As its financial ecosystem matures, bitcoin technologies are poised to be a key enabler of two of the most critical sectors of the next decade: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the global Energy Transition.
These sectors are expected to define the next wave of economic growth, and bitcoin, along with its purpose-built payments technology, the Lightning Network, are set to play a central role in advancing both fields.
The need for scalable payments
As the AI industry, and Generative AI technologies specifically, mature, they will require a payment infrastructure capable of supporting highly scalable, microtransactions in real time. Traditional financial systems are not built to handle the demands of a system that requires low-latency, high-frequency, and low-cost transactions at massive scale.
Enter Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN), is uniquely architected to meet these needs. The Lightning Network is a second-layer solution built on top of bitcoin’s blockchain. Unlike other blockchain scaling solutions,
Lightning does not require individual transactions to consume scarce block space of an underlying blockchain. This allows it to process transactions at a scale that can match the peak demands of the AI industry, including the rapid payments required by streaming services, popular agents and bots, or APIs in high demand.
The Lightning Network (LN) is a second-layer scaling solution built on Bitcoin’s blockchain, designed to facilitate high-speed, low-cost transactions without congesting the base layer. Unlike other blockchain scaling solutions, Lightning’s offchain scaling mechanism operates through a payment channel network that enables transactions at scale without the same blockspace constraint as other solutions such as rollups and sidechains.
The flexibility and scalability of the Lightning Network mean it can handle these transactions at a level no other payment solutions can match. Moreover, as AI applications mature, the possibility of AI agents making and receiving payments via the Lightning Network opens up new opportunities, allowing bots to directly interact with the digital economy—whether paying for data, purchasing computing resources, or rewarding user engagement.
Bitcoin: key for energy transition
As the world shifts toward renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, there is a fundamental need to address the intermittent nature of these energy sources.
Bitcoin mining, despite its critics, offers a flexible, price-responsive consumer for surplus energy, helping bring demand far closer to output. Unlike traditional energy consumers, Bitcoin miners can adjust their consumption based on price fluctuations, absorbing surplus energy when it is abundant and scaling back during periods of high demand. This dynamic flexibility is essential for stabilising grids that rely on renewable energy sources.
Bitcoin mining operations are also well-positioned to support the scaling of renewable energy infrastructure. By consuming excess energy during off-peak hours, miners help optimise the returns on renewable energy projects, providing a market for energy that might otherwise go unused. In contrast, AI data centers tend to have higher uptime requirements, often adding to peak demand rather than alleviating it.
Infrastructure for the future
The Lightning Network is not just a scalable payment solution—it is perfectly designed to support the future of digital economies, eventually capable of handling billions of transactions per second (TPS). Its ability to scale to this magnitude is one of the key differentiators that sets it apart from other blockchain scaling technologies, which are optimised for more complex contracts rather than high-frequency payments.
Additionally, Lightning’s ability to settle transactions in real-time offers significant advantages for industries such as AI and energy, where instantaneous payment confirmation is crucial.
In contrast, traditional financial systems often introduce delays of days or weeks for payment settlements, creating liquidity bottlenecks and increasing credit risk. Lightning’s real-time payments could significantly reduce the need for collateral in energy markets and free up working capital that can be reinvested into the infrastructure required to support these industries.
A catalyst for capital in AI and renewables
As institutional investors turn their attention to the AI and renewable energy revolutions, Bitcoin stands at the ready to support both. This asset class has already shown its ability to attract significant capital flows through ETF products and institutional adoption.
However, we are just at the tip of the iceberg in observing how Bitcoin and its Lightning Network can catalyse the next generation of technological infrastructure.
The simultaneous revolutions in energy and AI will define the next couple of decades and beyond, and Bitcoin provides a solution to critical infrastructure challenges in both—scalable, real-time payments for AI applications and flexible, and flexible energy monetisation for the renewable energy sector. As traditional asset managers begin to recognise these synergies, Bitcoin’s role in driving both AI and the energy transition will only continue to grow.
As Bitcoin continues to gain traction in mainstream finance, it is becoming clear that its potential reaches far beyond its use as a store of value or speculative investment. It is a technological enabler for the industries of the future, making it an asset that asset managers, technologists, and energy providers should all watch closely in the years ahead.
Alyse Killeen is Managing Partner at Stillmark
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