The future of Bitcoin building is on Internet Computer Protocol. Right now, more than 99 percent of Bitcoin transactions happen directly on third parties, which greatly diminishes the value of the network. Internet Computer Protocol has the absolute best Bitcoin layer two, and now there's a superpower coming out on it: you're getting Caffeine AI and a Bitcoin layer two in the same environment. Very soon, you're going to be able to build your own Bitcoin apps.
Whether you want to build a Bitcoin wallet, a Bitcoin meme coin launcher, Bitcoin DeFi, or a Bitcoin game, you're going to be able to build all of that directly with AI. You're not going to need to pay developers a whole bunch of money to make an app. If you have an app idea, you'll be able to make it yourself.
What you'll actually be able to build
Imagine being able to play poker with your friends. Now, I don't gamble, and I've struggled with gambling addiction in the past. I'm glad I haven't placed a bet in a long time. But let's say you want to play poker with your friends, and you want to play on the blockchain so it's provably fair, and you want to gamble with Bitcoin. What Caffeine AI is going to do soon, from what I can see, is let you tell it: make me a Texas Hold'em poker website where you sign in with Internet Identity and where you place your bets with Bitcoin. Then you'd be able to take your Bitcoin and play poker with it with your friends on a provably random blockchain with no rake at all. You could even scale that up if you wanted to. That, to me, is the future of technology.
I'm doing this live right now. I'm live as I'm recording this, playing some Call of Duty and talking about this, because of what I see in the future. If you want to build with Bitcoin, Bitcoin builders especially really care about decentralization. And right now, it's difficult to build any kind of application that has real utility for Bitcoin that isn't centralized.
The centralization problem almost no one sees
What almost nobody holding Bitcoin understands is that almost everybody who interacts with Bitcoin does so through a centralized third party. For example, if you're trading Bitcoin Runes or Ordinals, the website you're doing that on is a centralized third party, which means you're not even actually interfacing with the blockchain yourself. A third party is completely between you and the blockchain.
It's the same issue if you're buying Bitcoin on a crypto exchange. You don't even know if you're buying real Bitcoin, because you're going through this centralized third party. And if you want to make apps right now, it's very difficult to integrate Bitcoin into any kind of DeFi app, or any kind of application that isn't totally controlled on a third party. Right now, literally the only way to do that is Internet Computer Protocol.
What you're seeing is that Bitcoin developers are discovering Internet Computer Protocol is the best place to build with the best decentralization and security that you can possibly have in a Bitcoin app. So a lot of Bitcoin builders are building on Internet Computer Protocol right now, even before Caffeine AI has come out. Still, it's hard to build a Bitcoin app that has any real decentralization or security behind it unless you build on ICP, and it's hard to do that because you have to learn how to build on ICP in the first place.
Why Caffeine AI changes everything
With Caffeine AI coming out, that's going to change everything. Anybody will be able to code some kind of Bitcoin app through vibe coding, through talking to Caffeine AI, which will build out the front end and the back end for you fully on chain. You'll have a direct website URL you can give to somebody. This is so much easier than trying to make an app for the App Store. You just can't appreciate how easy this is unless you've actually tried to build your own app, and most people have never tried.
Imagine you want to build a hyper local version of Uber or Lyft. You could do that now with Caffeine AI. You could say, hey, make me a local version of Uber or Lyft, and I want everybody to be able to pay with Bitcoin and ICP. Then you could build that, you could own that, and you could just use it with your friends or your family members, or you could start promoting it and getting local drivers out there.
This, to me, is where any real usage of Bitcoin comes from: people being able to easily build apps with it. Right now with Bitcoin, all you've got is narratives and centralized third parties holding everything. You've got people talking about how Bitcoin is digital currency, but what you don't have is people actually making direct, on-chain Bitcoin transactions. Almost everybody is transacting through a third party like a crypto exchange. And in that case, if the exchange isn't honest, it's selling extra Bitcoin it doesn't even have. That's extremely unsustainable for the long term, and it drains the value. Once you can start building Bitcoin apps yourself, that's going to give a whole lot more utility to what you can do with Bitcoin besides just letting it sit on an exchange.
Short term bullish, long term something bigger
In the short term, I think ICP and Caffeine AI and people easily building all these Bitcoin apps with Chain-key Bitcoin is going to be very bullish for Bitcoin, for Bitcoin DeFi, and for Internet Computer Protocol. But in the long term, once you start building stuff on ICP, you're going to start to wonder why you even need Bitcoin anymore. If I can build this application on ICP, then why not just have ICP instead of Bitcoin?
That's the point I'm at now. I've come to believe I don't see the point in even having Bitcoin, because I'd rather just have ICP. With Bitcoin, you're just hoping the price goes up. You can't get any staking rewards directly on it. This is why the fees are expensive to transact, and this is why almost everybody holding Bitcoin is doing so on a third-party exchange. They're not even actually holding it in their own crypto wallet, which is a huge problem, because if that's how you're holding your Bitcoin, you don't even know if you have real Bitcoin or not.
What I see for the future is a transition: people going from holding Bitcoin on exchanges, to building their own Bitcoin apps. But the end game, to me, is building on ICP. Once you start building on ICP, you're not going to even need Bitcoin anymore. In the short term, though, I think Bitcoin DeFi could really take off, because Bitcoin has the branding and everybody knows about Bitcoin. When you're building apps, having that Bitcoin branding is going to get people on board a lot easier.
So what's going to happen? I think this cycle ICP is really going to go nuts, and part of ICP going nuts is going to be with Bitcoin, with people building all these apps with Caffeine AI that have Bitcoin integrated, because Bitcoin has the name recognition. But long term, I see it all transitioning just to ICP. I think Bitcoin is going to have diminishing returns. In the short term, it could actually create a significant amount of scarcity for Bitcoin, because as you start moving Bitcoin off of all these centralized exchanges and onto ICP to use for all these apps, that could pump Bitcoin quite a bit. But in the long term, in my belief, ICP is going to vastly outperform Bitcoin. In the short term and foreseeable future, they're going to be able to grow a lot together, and it's ideal to be aware of and use both of them for sure.
If you're into Bitcoin, research ICP
If you're into Bitcoin, you absolutely want to be figuring out what Internet Computer Protocol is, because to me that's the best chance of having any real Bitcoin decentralization, of having Bitcoin apps that aren't just controlled by third parties. ICP is the network most like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is like a proof of concept; it shows you what's possible. But ICP does everything you really want a blockchain to do.
I'm really excited to see the future. I think we have so much to look forward to in Internet Computer Protocol: Bitcoin apps that aren't totally centralized third parties, and more things you can actually do with your Bitcoin besides just trade it on some exchange and hope the price goes up. I think this is going to be a really exciting time to be in both, although I think the returns are going to be better on ICP. The main message, though, is that if you're excited about the future of Bitcoin, you need to be researching ICP, because this is where the vast majority of Bitcoin building is going to happen going forward. If you want to dig deeper into how I think about all of this, you can follow along with my ICP Crypto playlist.