Bitcoin News Today: Bitcoin lessons drive push for decentralized AI infrastructure as risks of rented compute grow

Bitcoin has long served as a blueprint for digital resilience, and its lessons are now being applied to artificial intelligence, according to industry voices. In a recent opinion piece, Ahmad Shadid, founder of O.xyz and co-founder of IO.ne, argues that the future of AI must move away from reliance on centralized compute services like those offered by OpenAI and other major providers [1]. The current model, he says, is not infrastructure—it’s “UX theater,” and it is fundamentally unstable [1].

Shadid points to a growing trend: every week, new AI startups emerge from stealth, often with slick user interfaces and minimal underlying innovation. These companies frequently operate by paying for prompts from proprietary models and reselling the results, earning a margin that is precarious at best. This model is inherently vulnerable to sudden changes in pricing, usage limits, or service conditions from the providers they depend on [1].

He warns of what he calls the “Great API Purge” by 2027, a scenario in which major AI platforms significantly increase prices, impose strict usage quotas, or revoke access altogether, effectively eliminating 70% of today’s AI startups overnight [1]. In this context, Shadid emphasizes that only those companies that have built on decentralized infrastructure will survive [1].

The risks of centralized compute are manifold. First, cost volatility is a major issue: a sudden price hike for a key API endpoint can double a startup’s operational expenses overnight. Second, supply risks are real, as GPU shortages have already led to throttling for smaller users. Third, licenses can be revoked by policy updates, rendering once-functional tools useless [1]. These risks all stem from a single point of failure: the control of the AI inference pipeline, which Shadid compares to the early days of online payments, where platforms like Visa and PayPal held too much power [1].

Bitcoin’s 2009 breakthrough, Shadid argues, offers a solution to this problem. By distributing consensus across thousands of nodes, Bitcoin removed the need for a central authority to control money. A similar approach can be applied to AI: decentralizing compute, models, and data. In this model, applications would access multiple model pools and execute tasks on the fastest and cheapest GPU cluster available [1]. The result is an “antifragile mesh” where no vendor can lock users out [1].

Web3, Shadid says, provides the necessary incentive layer. Through tokens, proof systems, and smart contracts, decentralized AI networks can align thousands of GPU operators, model curators, and data stewards without relying on a central entity. Censorship-resistant storage and validator-checked execution ensure that key AI components remain accessible even if a cloud region or jurisdiction becomes hostile [1].

The shift is already under way. Some networks are auctioning idle GPU cycles, while others are designing AI agents that can migrate between models without code rewrites. When a major provider goes offline, workloads reroute automatically, much like Bitcoin rebalances hash power after a mining pool collapse [1].

For investors and builders, the stakes are high. Shadid predicts that startups built on rented compute will trade at a discount once capital realizes the fragility of their margins. Conversely, tokens and equities tied to verifiable compute networks, licensed data cooperatives, and agent runtimes are expected to command a premium [1]. Institutional investors are already shifting focus toward resilience and fee capture, while large language model providers seek guaranteed content rights [1].

The future of AI, Shadid argues, must be governed by code—not contracts. Projects that are model-agnostic, compute-diverse, and community-owned will be the ones that endure. They will be the ones that understand that intelligence cannot be leased—it must be built, and its keys must belong to its builders [1].

Source: [1] Bitcoin showed the path, and decentralized AI must ditch rented compute (https://cointelegraph.com/news/deai-ditch-rented-compute)