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AI potential to drive crypto demand remains ‘underappreciated’: BlackRock
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BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, says broad artificial intelligence adoption could represent a significant and underappreciated source of demand for digital assets, according to its latest research paper titled "The Machine-Native Economy." Authored by Will Su, Robert Mitchnick, Jay Jacobs, and William Helm, the report argues that the rise of AI and machine-to-machine payments could increase demand for blockchains, stablecoins, and other programmable payment infrastructure. The firm positions AI as a structural catalyst for digital asset adoption and digital assets as a potential facilitator of the AI economy, noting that this relationship remains largely overlooked by the market.
One of BlackRock's central arguments is that the emergence of agentic AI — AI systems capable of performing tasks autonomously — will drive demand for machine-native payment instruments. While existing payment systems can support some degree of automation, processes such as account setup, credentialing, and authorization still often require human involvement. Additionally, merchant fees can render low-value transactions uneconomic, while settlement and finality times vary across providers. BlackRock stated that stablecoins, native cryptocurrencies, and tokenized real-world assets are well suited for high-frequency, sub-cent, machine-to-machine transactions conducted around the clock, with stablecoins likely to lead transactional use.
Beyond payments, the report identifies a potentially transformative opportunity in the compute market — the processing power required to train and run AI systems. As AI demand surges, companies may seek to lock in costs while providers aim to manage risk through financial instruments. BlackRock suggested that claims on compute capacity could be represented as tokens, transferable, pledgeable as collateral, or traded on open markets. The authors argued this could broaden institutional investor participation and establish compute as a new opportunity for the broader digital asset ecosystem, with AI agents themselves using these markets to automatically purchase resources as needed.
The BlackRock thesis echoes arguments already advanced by crypto executives. In July, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pushed back against calls for the crypto industry to pivot toward AI, arguing that AI agents will need programmable money rather than traditional banking rails. "AI being a megatrend takes nothing away from crypto," Armstrong wrote, adding that it makes crypto more important rather than less.
Several crypto companies are already building tools to support AI-driven financial activity. Coinbase's x402 protocol and Tempo's Machine Payments Protocol were both designed to enable AI agents to automatically pay for online services. In May, Circle introduced agent wallets and USDC payment tools, while OKX's Agent Payments Protocol supports recurring payments and escrow-based arrangements where funds are released after a task's completion.
The crypto industry has long argued for a link between AI and digital assets, but BlackRock's research could bring this thesis to its broader audience of institutional investors, potentially accelerating mainstream acceptance. If BlackRock's vision materializes, the intersection of AI and crypto could expand the role of digital assets from speculative investments to core infrastructure for an increasingly autonomous digital economy.
