Cryptocurrency venture capital firms are repositioning digital assets as transaction infrastructure for autonomous systems, with Electric Capital's Avichal Garg projecting Bitcoin prices between $5 million and $10 million based on adoption as a settlement layer.
The valuation thesis shifts crypto from speculative asset to operational infrastructure. Garg cites Bitcoin's advantages over gold: fungibility, transfer speed, divisibility, liquidity, and seizure resistance. Gate Ventures echoes this infrastructure framing, highlighting mining firms in APAC, Central Asia, and the Middle East transitioning to AI compute operations as undervalued assets with "substantial growth potential."
The autonomous systems deployment timeline supports this positioning. Uber Technologies plans commercial robotaxi service in the Bay Area by late 2026, creating near-term demand for decentralized settlement systems that enable machine-to-machine payments without intermediaries.
This represents expansion beyond crypto's current total addressable market. Traditional store-of-value markets and cross-border finance already justify existing valuations. Autonomous commerce adds a new demand vector: AI agents executing transactions require settlement layers that operate without human intervention, support micropayments, and function across jurisdictions.
Gate Ventures' mining-to-compute thesis connects infrastructure layers. Mining operations provide distributed compute capacity that can pivot to AI workloads while maintaining blockchain validation as a parallel revenue stream. This dual-use infrastructure model positions these facilities as foundational to both settlement layer security and the computational substrate for autonomous systems.
The $5-10 million Bitcoin projection assumes capture of gold's $15 trillion market capitalization plus autonomous commerce settlement volume. Current Bitcoin market cap sits near $1 trillion, implying 5-10x growth from store-of-value substitution alone, before accounting for machine economy transaction volume.
Ridgepost Capital's Q4 2025 earnings emphasized non-GAAP metrics for "better comparability of ongoing operating performance," reflecting how crypto venture firms measure infrastructure value differently than speculative asset returns. The focus shifts from price volatility to network utility and transaction throughput.
This infrastructure narrative positions cryptocurrency networks as the financial backbone for autonomous systems that cannot use traditional banking rails designed for human-mediated transactions.