Begin with the job, the market and the reason to switch
A useful venture question is not “what stock price do we need?” It is “what problem does this product solve, how many customers could choose it, and how much economic activity could it win?” Bitcoin’s proposed job in this model is portable, verifiable, scarce long-term savings.
The v1 sequence is market size, market growth, assumed penetration, then implied value. It deliberately does not pretend that the penetration has already been derived from customer cohorts. Reach, retention and allocation expansion are the proposed v2.0 upgrade.
In 2014, Uber investor Bill Gurley argued that better service could expand addressable demand beyond the historical taxi market and that assumed share ceilings needed a rationale. That is a useful challenge to a narrow denominator. It is an investor’s argument, not a rule that any superior product achieves a particular market share.
[VC-GURLEY][MODEL]What changes when the product is Bitcoin
| Business / asset | Adoption measure | Economic measure |
|---|---|---|
| Ride service | Retained riders and rides per rider. | Bookings, revenue and business economics. |
| AI application | Retained organizations and workflows used. | Durable revenue, usage expansion and margins. |
| Bitcoin | Capital represented by retained adopters and their allocations. | Desired holdings and a conditional monetary valuation. |
For an AI application, a successful trial is not the same as organization-wide usage. Bessemer emphasizes retention and expansion into recurring workflows. That distinction transfers as a modeling question: Bitcoin adoption should ultimately concern retained capital, not only wallets or app downloads.
A share of annual rides or room nights is a flow measure. A share of the SOV universe is a stock-value measure. V1 does not insert “Uber or Airbnb took 10%” as a Bitcoin coefficient, nor does it equate a company’s market capitalization with a share of the property it helps users book.
[VC-AI][MODEL]Turn product advantages into hypotheses about behavior
Bitcoin’s design allows peer-to-peer transfer, self-custody, public verification and a constrained issuance schedule. Those characteristics can be attractive for particular savings needs. Holding through a volatile market, securing keys and meeting fixed nominal obligations create different considerations.
Mark’s thesis is that these advantages become sufficiently compelling to win a much larger savings role. The model does not quantify the statement “100 times better,” and it does not apply a 100× premium to an asset value.
The behavioral questions are concrete: does easier access bring in more retained capital? Do adopters maintain larger allocations? Do treasury and investment mandates permit meaningful holdings? Do people continue choosing Bitcoin after a severe drawdown? Product quality must eventually show up in those choices, not only in a persuasive analogy.
[BTC-FAQ][MODEL]AI is an adoption channel, not an automatic valuation bonus
Lightning Labs documents tools for Bitcoin-based agent transactions. Coinbase also documents an agent-payment route using a stablecoin. Technical availability establishes possible payment channels, not the amount of savings that will remain in Bitcoin.
For AI to support a higher Bitcoin share, owners or operators would need to choose sustained Bitcoin savings, reserve, collateral or working balances. Rapid transactions with small balances can create high volume without proportionate retained value.
V1 adds no standalone AI growth multiplier. A future model could make access, retention or allocation respond to specific AI channels, while testing competing implementations. That work is deliberately deferred rather than smuggled into the present numbers.
[AI-BTC][AI-USDC][MODEL]