BlackRock Says the Machines Will Pay in Crypto

The world’s largest asset manager has put its name to a big idea. BlackRock’s new paper, The Machine-Native Economy, argues that AI adoption could become a meaningful new source of demand for digital assets.

The headlines are doing the rounds. Raoul Pal went further, telling his followers that “everything will be a token.” So let’s look at what BlackRock actually said, what it didn’t say, and what it means for you.

The Big Idea

The core argument is simple. AI is intelligence built for machines. Crypto is money built for machines. As the two develop, they start to fit together.

The key shift is “agentic AI.” These are AI systems that don’t just answer questions. They carry out tasks. Book a flight. Buy some data. Pay for a service. All with limited human input.

Once software is spending money on your behalf, it needs a way to pay. That’s where crypto comes in.

Why Agents Need Crypto Rails

Traditional payment systems were built for humans. Opening an account needs a person. Card fees make tiny payments uneconomic. Settlement can take a day or more.

An AI agent might want to make thousands of payments worth a fraction of a cent each, at 3am on a Sunday. Banks and card networks aren’t designed for that.

Blockchains are. They run 24/7, settle quickly and can handle very small amounts. BlackRock highlights Coinbase’s x402 protocol, which lets machines pay for things over the internet using stablecoins.

This isn’t theoretical hand-waving either. Stripe, Google, Visa and OpenAI are all building payment standards for AI agents. Stripe also agreed last month to acquire OpenRouter, a platform that routes AI workloads across hundreds of models. When the big payments players move, it’s worth paying attention.

Stablecoins Are the Workhorse

BlackRock is clear that stablecoins are likely to do most of the heavy lifting. Their price stability makes them practical for payments.

The numbers are already large. Stablecoins now exceed $300 billion in circulation. Adjusted stablecoin transaction volume topped $11 trillion in 2025, in the same ballpark as Visa and Mastercard. And from 2020 to 2025 that volume grew at around 80% a year, compared with roughly 8.5% for the traditional US bank transfer system.

That growth happened before AI agents became a meaningful user. They are a potential tailwind on top.

Where Does Bitcoin Fit?

This is the part most headlines skipped.

BlackRock cites research from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, where AI models were tested in simulated scenarios. The models generally chose stablecoins for everyday spending and Bitcoin for long-term savings.

That lines up with how many of our clients already think about it. Stablecoins as the spending account. Bitcoin as the savings account.

An important caveat: these were simulations of AI responses, not real agents spending real money. BlackRock says so itself. It’s an interesting signal, not proof.

Compute Could Become an Asset Class

The second big theme is compute, the processing power needed to run AI. Estimates put spending on AI infrastructure above $5 trillion between 2025 and 2030. Cloud revenue from Amazon, Microsoft and Google alone is forecast to reach about $1.1 trillion by 2030.

BlackRock’s view is that compute will eventually trade like a commodity, with futures and standardised contracts. Some of those claims could be tokenised and settled on-chain, with AI agents buying capacity on demand.

This is further out. BlackRock acknowledges real hurdles, including differences in chip quality and regional energy costs.

A Reality Check

It’s easy to get carried away here, so let’s be balanced.

First, BlackRock itself describes the ecosystem as nascent. Agent payments are small today, and compute markets are thin.

Second, more activity on a blockchain doesn’t automatically mean a higher price for its token. BlackRock notes that value capture depends on each network’s fee and staking design. Stablecoin usage can boom while the token underneath it goes nowhere.

Third, on Raoul’s point. Everything may well become a token. But a token existing is not the same as a token being valuable. Most tokens launched in every cycle so far have gone to zero. Tokenisation is a technology shift. It isn’t a guarantee of returns.

What This Means for You

The bigger story is who is saying it. BlackRock runs the largest Bitcoin ETF in the world, and this paper was co-authored by its Head of Digital Assets alongside senior ETF product leaders. Institutions don’t publish research like this for fun. It signals how they are thinking about the next decade.

For Bitcoin, the takeaway is that the “digital savings” role keeps getting reinforced, now from an unexpected angle. For the wider market, stablecoins and the networks that settle them are where the AI story is most tangible today.

None of this changes the short-term price picture. It’s a long-horizon theme, and it will take years to show up in the data. But the direction of travel is getting harder to ignore.

So Why Did Bitcoin Pullback?

The report is a positive long-term signal for digital assets. But overnight, the short-term story was inflation and yields. Once again, they dominated.

US Treasury yields pushed higher. A weak 5-year bond auction added to the pressure. Demand came in softer than expected, and investors demanded a higher yield to hold US debt given the risk of further rate hikes.

The result was a broad pullback. The S&P 500, gold and Bitcoin all fell.

For Bitcoin, this looks like a healthy reset. It flushed out late leveraged longs, with liquidations clustered around $84k. We’re now down just under 4% from the recent high, back to Monday’s price.

These pullbacks come quickly. In recent weeks they have also been getting shallower, with dips bought up fast. Those waiting for a much deeper pullback have often been left on the sidelines. That can change, but so far buyers have been stepping in early.

---

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,286)

Source: https://www.tradingview.com/x/mZgf3YZq/

PAXG remains under bearish pressure this week. The last 24 hours delivered the first real move in price, and it was to the downside. For now, the bears have the upper hand in this arm wrestle for control.

---

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

Source: https://www.tradingview.com/x/W8fKzvU7/

As mentioned earlier, rising yields pushed Bitcoin lower overnight after it fell just short of flipping the year green. Very short-term momentum has faded. If recent behaviour is any guide, buyers are likely to step in on this dip and make another attempt at turning 2026 positive.

---

*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

---

Written by Alexandar Artis