Marc van der Chijs, a co-founder of the former bitcoin mining enterprise Hut 8 (HUT), has grown increasingly anxious regarding the technology to which his firm transitioned: artificial intelligence.
“I’ve become more of a doomer over the past week, to be honest,” he expressed during a conversation with CoinDesk.
This apprehension represents a perspective adjustment for an investor who previously likened the potential of AI today to that of bitcoin back when he entered the sector in 2013. He continues to anticipate that this technology will reshape the economy, yet he increasingly questions whether people can maintain oversight over its advancement.
“We have lost control, actually,” he stated. “And until we get the control back, I’m actually worried that we’re moving too fast.”
Van der Chijs’s shift toward a pessimistic outlook echoes warnings raised by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who encouraged industry figures to slow the pace of frontier AI development. Amodei similarly warned that swift advancements—pushed forward by artificial intelligence models iteratively enhancing themselves—carry the danger of bypassing human mastery and inflicting widespread infrastructure harm.
Both individuals highlight identical structural dilemmas: a fierce competitive race among corporations and countries that penalizes individual restraint, making systemic disruption or catastrophic failure feel almost certain prior to the implementation of genuine international safeguards.
AI exposing vulnerabilities
Van der Chijs fears a significant disruption, potentially impacting financial networks or essential infrastructure, might be necessary before national governments choose to collaborate.
This worry extends directly to traditional banking institutions. Van der Chijs is convinced that AI might reveal weaknesses in outdated banking software, threatening public confidence in operations that rely on deeply connected frameworks. Within the crypto sector, he perceives trading platforms and other commercial entities structured around bitcoin as far more vulnerable than the underlying blockchain network itself.
His concerns have not diminished his broad perspective regarding AI’s financial potential. He forecasts that artificial intelligence and automation could ultimately handle 90% to 95% of current occupations, concurrently sparking massive drops in the pricing of consumer products and services.
Under such circumstances, governing bodies would require alternative revenue streams as employment dynamics shift. He proposed levies targeting robots or artificial intelligence token usage, while admitting that locally deployed models would make tax collection much more complicated.
His personal portfolio has already tracked the rapid ascension of this technology.
“I sold a lot of my bitcoin. I went into AI,” he mentioned.
Van der Chijs thinks that investors shifting their capital toward AI helped suppress bitcoin from achieving the $200,000 to $250,000 thresholds that he and other participants had previously projected. He is currently channeling a portion of his AI earnings back into the digital asset space, primarily by utilizing exchange-traded funds.
Furthermore, he perceives a more robust commercial argument for artificial intelligence infrastructure than for bitcoin mining operations. Talking in his personal capacity, he characterized Hut 8’s transition toward artificial intelligence as “the best move ever” and noted that, if he managed the business today, he would dedicate resources entirely to AI data centers.
Nonetheless, high enthusiasm for this technological wave does not imply he views every AI venture as appealing at prevailing valuations. Over the upcoming five-year window, he argues that Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX) might outperform Anthropic, regardless of his prediction that premier AI creators could eventually scale into the planet’s largest corporations.
Bitcoin retains a distinct status within his philosophy: the specific asset he would select if he were limited to retaining just one for the remainder of his life.
“I think of all the assets you can hold, if there’s just one, it would be bitcoin.”
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/09/17/we-have-lost-control-crypto-pioneer-warns-ai-could-trigger-systemic-banking-and-infrastructure-shocks.
