BlackRock's Digital Assets Research team argues that artificial intelligence agents, rather than new regulation or institutional buying, could become a primary driver of crypto demand. The firm's new paper, "The Machine-Native Economy," posits that stablecoins are the most suitable instrument for the machine-to-machine payments these autonomous systems will require.
The research, led by Will Su and Robert Mitchnick alongside iShares product leads, centers on "agentic AI." These systems can plan and execute multi-step tasks, such as booking travel or purchasing data, with minimal human intervention. This autonomy creates a friction point in current financial infrastructure: traditional bank accounts and credit cards require human identification, while card-network fees are ill-suited for the micro-transactions typical of API calls.
BlackRock identifies stablecoins as the solution. These cryptocurrencies, pegged to stable assets like the U.S. dollar, offer 24/7 availability and near-instant settlement without the need for traditional banking intermediaries. The paper notes that adjusted stablecoin transaction volume exceeded $11 trillion in 2025, a figure comparable to the annual payment volumes of Visa and Mastercard. While this remains significantly lower than the $93 trillion processed through the U.S. ACH bank transfer system in the same period, stablecoin volume has grown at an annual rate of approximately 80% since 2020, outpacing ACH's roughly 8.5% growth.
Infrastructure supporting this shift is already in development. Coinbase built the x402 protocol, which utilizes the HTTP 402 web code to allow software to pay for data feeds or API calls within the same request that retrieves them. Amazon has integrated stablecoin payments into its AI cloud tools in partnership with Coinbase and Stripe, enabling agents to pay for services mid-task. Google has also developed an agent-payments layer with support from Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation, extending its Agent2Agent framework to handle various payment methods.
However, current real-world usage remains limited. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs analyzed $52.7 million in x402 settlements this year and estimated that AI agents accounted for only 0.6% to 7.5% of that value. TRM Labs found that most of the traffic consisted of ordinary automated scripts rather than genuinely autonomous agents.
Despite this, BlackRock argues that the financial plumbing is being constructed ahead of widespread adoption. The firm cites analyst estimates projecting combined 2030 revenue for the cloud divisions of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google at approximately $1.1 trillion. The paper envisions a future where computing capacity is packaged into standardized contracts, similar to commodity futures, which can be bought, sold, or used as collateral on a blockchain.
In this scenario, an AI agent could independently seek and purchase the cheapest available server capacity on a job-by-job basis. BlackRock's own data indicates that stablecoins' circulating market capitalization surpassed $300 billion as of September 2026. The firm's thesis is that autonomous systems paying their own bills will drive the next phase of stablecoin growth.