BlackRock stated in a latest paper that artificial intelligence could become an important driving force for the adoption of digital assets. The company believes that as AI agents begin to autonomously purchase data, call services, and allocate computing power, the demand for on-chain payment and settlement tools will increase accordingly.

The company disclosed that AI provides “machine-native” decision-making capabilities, while digital assets provide the payment infrastructure necessary to execute these decisions. According to this concept, when an agent program completes a task, it can directly pay for a data request, a service reservation, or a period of computing power usage, without having to wait for human intervention.

Stablecoins are seen as a more immediate direction.

BlackRock believes that stablecoins may be the first category of digital assets to benefit. The reason is that the prices of stablecoins are relatively stable, making them more suitable for pricing services; at the same time, blockchain networks can provide 24/7 settlement capabilities, which are ideal for frequent and small-value automatic payments between machines.

The paper mentions that the x402 protocol launched by Coinbase is a new attempt by AI to act as an agent for online resource payments, with use cases including network resource purchases such as API calls. BlackRock also pointed out that existing payment networks are also being adjusted to accommodate the commercial activities involving AI agents.

The computing power contract market is still yet to take shape.

Compared to payments, BlackRock sees the market related to computing power as a longer-term opportunity. As the demand for AI continues to grow, the standardized rights and interests that will emerge around computing power in the future may be traded or financed through digital asset infrastructure, or used as collateral.

However, the company also emphasizes that this market is still not mature at present. Standardized computing power contracts have not yet been widely established, and the liquidity of related secondary markets has not yet formed, so there is still a way to go before we see large-scale financialization.

Cloud revenue is expected to reach 1.1 trillion by 2030.

BlackRock cited analyst forecasts stating that by 2030, the combined revenue of Amazon's, Microsoft's, and Google's cloud services could reach approximately $1.1 trillion. The company used this to illustrate that if the demand for AI computing power continues to grow, the potential for creating tradable assets surrounding computing power may also increase accordingly.

Additional information:This paper lists "proxy payment" as a more immediate application scenario, while placing "computing power rights and interests trading" in a longer-term phase, indicating that the maturity levels of these two types of digital asset opportunities are not the same.