BlackRock, the world’s leading asset manager, believes artificial intelligence (AI) could become a major driver of digital asset adoption.
According to the company’s new white paper, demand for stablecoins and blockchain solutions could skyrocket as autonomous AI agents begin paying for services, moving money, and sourcing computing power.
Specifically, the world’s largest asset manager argues that AI provides “machine-native intelligence,” while digital assets could supply the payment and settlement infrastructure needed for autonomous agents to act on their decisions.
“The rise of agentic AI and machine-to-machine payments will likely increase demand for blockchains and other programmable payment infrastructure; stablecoins, native cryptoassets, and other on-chain assets can serve as machine-native instruments for payment and settlement across these rails,” the company wrote.
AI agents can transform stablecoins, BlackRock claims
Stablecoins are likely to be among the first digital assets to benefit from this emerging “machine-native economy.” As BlackRock has argued, their relatively stable value makes them suitable for pricing goods and services, while blockchain networks can facilitate payments around the clock.
“Several types of digital assets may support agentic commerce, but stablecoins are likely to lead transactional use. Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to maintain a stable value relative to a reference currency, most commonly the U.S. dollar. Their price stability provides a reliable unit of account and greater predictability in pricing and settlement,” the paper read.
Notably, the company highlighted Coinbase’s x402 protocol as one of the emerging systems that allow AI agents to pay for online resources, including API calls. In addition, it reminded that traditional payment networks are also adapting to the rise of AI agent commerce.
Moreover, the paper identifies computing power as a longer-term opportunity for blockchain-based markets. Namely, as demand for AI processing grows, standardized claims on computing capacity could eventually be traded or used as collateral through digital asset infrastructure.
However, while the major cloud businesses are expected to reach about $1.1 trillion by 2030, BlackRock emphasized that agent-based payments are still in their early stage of development. In other words, markets for standardized compute contracts have yet to develop, meaning things are, as of now, still uncertain.
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