AI Agents to Drive Next Wave of Stablecoin and Tokenized Compute Demand

BlackRock's digital assets research team has released a paper arguing that autonomous AI agents will drive the next wave of stablecoin and tokenized compute demand. According to the report, titled 'The Machine-Native Economy,' agentic AI systems need programmable payment rails, which stablecoins are uniquely positioned to fill.

Stablecoin transaction volume exceeded $11 trillion in 2025 and has grown roughly 80% annually since 2020. BlackRock also sees tokenized claims on computing capacity emerging as a tradable asset class, potentially used as collateral or settled on blockchains.

The infrastructure for this is already being built by companies such as Coinbase, Amazon, Google, Circle, Stripe and others. However, real-world usage remains thin, with AI agents likely accounting for between 0.6% and 7.5% of the $52.7 million in x402 settlements examined by TRM Labs.

BlackRock's bet is that autonomous systems paying their own bills will drive the next leg of stablecoin growth.