BlackRock projects artificial intelligence will drive significant digital asset adoption as autonomous agents initiate payments, move capital, and acquire computing power. The asset manager's pa "The Machine-Native Economy," argues AI provides machine-native intelligence while digital assets offer the necessary payment and settlement infrastructure for agent actions.
An AI agent performing a task could autonomously pay for data requests, book services, or purchase computing capacity. These transactions would occur without requiring human intervention to complete.
Stablecoins are positioned as the primary near-term beneficiary of this trend. Their stable value makes them suitable for pricing services, and blockchain networks support 24-hour payment and settlement capabilities.
BlackRock highlights the Coinbase x402 protocol as an emerging mechanism for agents to pay for online resources, including API calls. The paper also acknowledges that existing payment networks are adapting to accommodate agentic commerce. Ethereum and Circle's Arc are flagged as potential rails for these transactions.
Tokenized compute represents a longer-term opportunity. As demand for AI processing expands, standardized claims on computing capacity could be traded, financed, or used as collateral through digital asset infrastructure.
Analyst estimates project revenue from major cloud businesses, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, could reach $1.1 trillion by 2030. This growth in cloud computing underscores the expanding demand for AI processing capacity.
Agent payments remain in early development, and liquid markets for standardized compute contracts have yet to form. BlackRock states these markets require further evolution.
This machine-native economy aligns with the growth of diversified real-world asset (RWA) stablecoins, which currently sustain 5-7 percent yields from real credit. This yield compares to a compressed crypto funding rate of approximately 4 percent.
The GENIUS Act, which sets the federal framework for payment stablecoin issuers, is pushing yield generation off-chain. The total addressable market for these RWA stablecoins is projected to grow to $4 billion within three years.
