BlackRock, Coinbase and Chainlink Executives Outline What AI Agents Need to Make Payments

Executives from BlackRock, Coinbase and Chainlink set out what AI agents will need to handle payments on their own at BlackRock's Aladdin Client Forum, with a focus on cheap settlement rails and controls on how agents behave.

@BlackRock digital assets research head Will Su joined @alecglovett of @coinbase and @SergeyNazarov of @chainlink for the discussion on AI agents with wallets. Aladdin is BlackRock's investment and risk management platform. Chainlink described it as sitting under more than $25 trillion of institutional investment.

BlackRock's Case for Machine-Native Money

Su pointed to a BlackRock paper that treats AI as the brains of a new machine economy and crypto as its money. The paper, titled "The Machine-Native Economy," comes from BlackRock's Digital Assets Research team, led by Su and Robert Mitchnick, according to Decrypt. It argues that AI provides "machine-native intelligence" while digital assets provide "machine-native money."

The paper says stablecoins are better suited than banks or card networks to the sub-cent, round-the-clock payments that agents would need to make, Decrypt reported. CoinDesk noted that BlackRock highlights Coinbase's x402 protocol as one emerging way for agents to pay for online resources, including API calls.

BlackRock does not present this as a finished system. CoinDesk reported that the firm says agent payments remain at an early stage and that liquid markets for standardized compute contracts have yet to develop. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs examined $52.7 million in x402 settlements and estimated AI agents likely accounted for between 0.6% and 7.5% of that volume, according to InvestingLive.

Coinbase and Chainlink on Rails, Identity and Limits

Lovett said agents need new low-cost rails built for very high volumes. He said Coinbase is investing heavily in stablecoin payments, fast blockchains and agent protocols.

Nazarov expects tightly controlled use of agents. In his view, an agent would carry an identity and operate within set limits, similar to a Know Your Agent check. That echoes the themes Chainlink flagged for the session: TokenPost reported that the discussion centered on trusted data, guardrails and verifiable execution for agentic transactions.

Chainlink operates a decentralized oracle network that connects smart contracts with external data sources, APIs and payment systems, according to TokenPost.

The panel reflects a wider push by traditional finance and crypto firms to define the infrastructure for software-driven payments. For now, the debate centers on cost, speed and control, with identity and spending limits seen as prerequisites for wider use.

Sources

Decrypt: BlackRock says AI agents could drive crypto's next demand wave

CoinDesk: BlackRock says AI agents could use stablecoins to pay for data and computing power

TokenPost: Chainlink co-founder joins BlackRock forum discussion on AI transactions