Crypto Pioneer Warns: AI Is Moving Too Fast, 'We Have Lost Control'

A well-known crypto entrepreneur is sounding the alarm about artificial intelligence (AI) — computer systems that can learn and make decisions like humans.

Marc van der Chijs, who co-founded Hut 8 (a company that once mined bitcoin and now focuses on AI), says humans are losing control over how fast AI is developing. "We have lost control, actually," he warned. He fears that a fierce race between companies and countries to build the best AI is pushing progress dangerously fast.

His biggest worries:

• AI could expose weak spots in old banking software, shaking people's trust in banks that all connect to each other.
• AI and robots could eventually do 90% to 95% of today's jobs, drastically lowering the cost of goods and services.
• Governments might need new ways to raise money, such as taxes on robots or AI usage, as traditional jobs disappear.

How his own money moved: Van der Chijs sold a lot of his bitcoin (the largest cryptocurrency) and poured that money into AI investments. He thinks this kind of shift — investors moving cash from crypto into AI — helped keep bitcoin's price below the $200,000 to $250,000 many expected. Now he's putting some of his AI profits *back* into crypto, mostly through ETFs (exchange-traded funds — baskets of investments you can buy like a single stock).

He also prefers AI data centers (huge buildings full of computers that power AI) over bitcoin mining as a business. Over the next five years, he thinks Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX could outperform AI firm Anthropic — even though he expects top AI companies to eventually become the world's biggest.

The bottom line: Despite all his fears about AI, van der Chijs still holds one clear belief: if he could own just one asset for life, it would be bitcoin.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/09/17/we-have-lost-control-crypto-pioneer-warns-ai-could-trigger-systemic-banking-and-infrastructure-shocks