AI potential to drive crypto demand remains ‘underappreciated’: BlackRock

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, says broad AI adoption could represent an underappreciated source of demand for digital assets.

In its latest research paper, “The Machine-Native Economy,” BlackRock said the rise of AI and machine-to-machine payments could increase demand for blockchains and other programmable payment infrastructure, including stablecoins and other on-chain assets. It also sees a potential opportunity for digital assets to support the compute market, allowing claims on computing capacity to be tokenized, traded and used as collateral.

“Together, these developments position AI as a structural catalyst for digital asset adoption and digital assets as a potential facilitator of the AI economy,” BlackRock’s Will Su, Robert Mitchnick, Jay Jacobs and William Helm wrote. “This relationship remains underappreciated and could expand the role of digital assets as core infrastructure for an increasingly autonomous digital economy.”

The crypto industry has long argued the potential link between AI and digital assets, but BlackRock’s research could bring that thesis to its broader audience of institutional investors.

AI could drive need for machine-native payment rails

One of BlackRock’s arguments is that the rise of agentic AI could increase the demand for machine-native payment instruments.

While existing payment rails can support some degree of automation, account setup, credentialing, and authorization could require human involvement. Meanwhile, merchant fees can make low-value transactions uneconomic and settlement and finality times could vary across providers.

BlackRock said stablecoins, native cryptocurrencies and tokenized real-world assets are well suited to high-frequency, sub-cent, machine-to-machine transactions that take place around the clock.

“Several types of digital assets may support agentic commerce, but stablecoins are likely to lead transactional use,” the authors said.

Compute could open a new market for crypto

The authors said there is an opportunity for digital assets in the growing market for compute — the processing power needed to train and run AI systems.

With AI demand surging, AI companies could seek to lock in costs and providers to manage risk. Claims on that capacity could then be represented as tokens to be transferred, pledged as collateral or traded.

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“This could in turn broaden institutional investor participation and establish compute as a new opportunity for the broader digital asset ecosystem,” the authors said. They also argued that AI agents could use these markets to automatically purchase resources as needed.

BlackRock’s thesis echoes arguments from crypto executives. In July, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pushed back against calls for crypto to pivot to AI, arguing that AI agents could stoke demand for crypto-based financial services.

“AI being a megatrend takes nothing away from crypto,” Armstrong wrote, because AI agents will need programmable money rather than traditional banking rails. “If anything, it makes crypto more important,” he added.

Crypto companies are already building tools to support that activity. Coinbase’s x402 protocol and Tempo’s Machine Payments Protocol have both been designed to let AI agents automatically pay for online services.

In May, Circle introduced agent wallets and USDC payment tools, while OKX’s Agent Payments Protocol is designed to support recurring payments and arrangements in which funds are held in escrow and released after a task’s completion.

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