BlackRock: AI could become one of crypto's biggest drivers
In a paper published today, the world's largest asset manager says the demand AI agents could generate is underappreciated. On X, a post about the paper passed 8,000 likes.
198.9 million payments
The paper is called "The Machine-Native Economy." According to BlackRock, an agent buying data, compute or a service runs into today's payment rails: opening an account and authorizing payments can require a person, and card fees make cent-sized payments unworkable. Stablecoins solve part of that because they run 24 hours a day.
There is already volume. Since May 2025, Coinbase's x402 protocol has processed about 198.9 million payments worth USD 52.7 million, 99.6% of them in USDC, according to Stablecoin Insider. Yesterday Coinbase added more than 6,000 stocks to "Coinbase for Agents," and agents can pay for market data with x402 from their USDC balance. Today the Cardano Foundation enabled x402 payments in ADA, although the service that processes those payments is not yet live on mainnet. Concordium said on X that it joined the x402 Foundation as a member.
BlackRock mentions a longer-term possibility: tokenizing compute capacity so it can be traded or used as collateral. The same paper notes that this market does not exist yet.
Sources: CoinDesk · Cointelegraph · Stablecoin Insider · Coinbase Developer Platform (X) · Cryptews · Concordium (X)