BlackRock sees AI driving crypto’s next bull phase as altcoin interest fades

BlackRock’s head of digital assets, Robbie Mitchnick, signaled a shift in how large investors view crypto, pointing to artificial intelligence (AI) as a more meaningful driver than the expansion of new tokens.

Speaking about client behavior, Mitchnick described a market that has moved away from broad exposure to smaller assets. He said the turnover among top tokens has been “pretty ferocious,” with only bitcoin BTC$70,122.25 and, later, ether (ETH) maintaining consistent positions. Many newer tokens, he suggested, fail to hold long-term relevance.

That pattern has shaped investor demand. “The majority of that is nonsense,” Mitchnick said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday, referring to the vast number of tokens in circulation. As a result, clients now focus on a narrow set of assets rather than building wide portfolios. Bitcoin and Ethereum dominate allocations, with limited interest beyond those names.

Against that backdrop, Mitchnick pointed to AI as a more significant force shaping crypto’s future role. He stressed that AI is a larger theme than digital assets, but said the two intersect in ways that could matter.

“AI agents are very unlikely to use, you know, Fedwire and SWIFT,” he said. “What is crypto? Crypto is computer-native money… AI is computer-native data and intelligence. And so there’s a natural symbiosis there.”

That framing casts crypto less as a speculative asset class and more as infrastructure. A growing number of bitcoin miners have begun shifting resources toward AI workloads, drawn by steadier revenue and rising demand for computing power. Several listed miners, including Hut 8 (HUT), Core Scientific (CORZ) and Iren (IREN), are either repurposing data centers or signing hosting deals tied to AI and high-performance computing. Others have signaled similar plans, even if mining remains their core business.

Mitchnick also linked AI-driven disruption to bitcoin’s appeal. As new technologies reshape industries and create uncertainty, he suggested bitcoin may serve as a stabilizing allocation. It can act as a diversifier during periods of rapid change.

“There are intersection points that are relevant… there’s clearly an advantage and an opportunity to play a role in the AI economy,” he said.