BlackRock released a latest study stating that AI agents may become the source of demand for the next round in the crypto market. Their judgment does not rely on new regulations or a new wave of institutional buying, but is based on a more direct scenario: when the AI system begins to autonomously call services, purchase computing power, and pay API fees, the traditional payment system will struggle to meet these high-frequency, small-amount, 24/7 settlement needs.
Stablecoins are more suitable for machine payments.
The report suggests that AI agents, which have the capability to act autonomously, not only provide recommendations but also complete orders, invoke external tools, and process payments on their own. The issue is that the existing banking account and credit card systems are primarily designed for human users, with account opening, identity verification, and authorization processes all relying on human intervention.
In this case, stablecoins are considered by BlackRock to be a more suitable payment tool. The reasons include their ability to operate 24 hours a day, fast settlement times, and their capability to support very small amounts of on-chain payments. In contrast, bank card networks are suitable for transactions of several dozen dollars, but not for fees as low as a fraction of a cent. API
The data cited in the report indicates that by 2025, the adjusted trading volume of stablecoins had exceeded $11 trillion, approaching the annual payment volumes of Visa and Mastercard. Although this figure is still lower than the approximately $93 trillion in bank transfers for that same year, the average annual growth rate of stablecoin trading volume since 2020 has been around 80%, which is significantly higher than the approximately 8.5% for ACH.
Payment infrastructure has begun to be implemented.
BlackRock believes that the underlying infrastructure for machine-to-machine payments has already emerged. The x402 protocol launched by Coinbase is based on the HTTP 402 payment request code, allowing software to complete payments directly when initiating a request, without the need for account registration or manual confirmation of each transaction.
The article mentions that Amazon has collaborated with Coinbase and Stripe to integrate stablecoin payments into their AI cloud platform, allowing AI agents to automatically pay for API, data sources, and reservation fees during task execution. Google, with the support of Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation, has also expanded the payment capabilities of its Agent2Agent framework to support bank cards, stablecoins, and real-time bank transfers.
However, the actual scale of use is still limited at present. Blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs analyzed the settlement data of x402 amounting to 52.7 million US dollars this year and found that the payments actually completed by AI agents may only account for 0.6% to 7.5%. The remaining traffic is more similar to ordinary automated scripts, rather than AI systems that have a higher degree of autonomy.
BlackRock mentioned the tokenization of computing power
In addition to payments, BlackRock also proposed another potential category of digital assets, namely standardized tokenized claims on computing power. The report suggests that as the demand for cloud computing increases, computing power may in the future be bought, sold, mortgaged, or automatically settled on-chain, similar to standardized contracts such as oil and wheat.
According to this concept, AI agents can automatically search for server resources with lower prices based on task requirements and pay for each usage directly, without the need for manual signing of traditional cloud service contracts first. BlackRock cited analyst forecasts stating that by 2030, the combined revenue from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google's cloud services could reach approximately $1.1 trillion.
As of September 2026, BlackRock estimates that the circulating market value of stablecoins has exceeded $300 billion. The institution's core judgment is that what will drive the expansion of stablecoins in the next phase may not be more consumer spending, but rather AI agents who begin to pay their own bills.
