Crypto Could Be AI's Payment Layer

BlackRock's recent report, The Machine-Native Economy, explores the possibility of a cryptocurrency-based payment layer for artificial intelligence (AI) transactions. According to the report, AI agents could use stablecoins, tokenized assets, and blockchain payment protocols to buy data, services, and computing capacity in an increasingly automated economy.

The report highlights emerging tools such as Coinbase's x402 protocol and payment protocols from Stripe, Google, and Visa that enable authorized machine-to-machine transactions. BlackRock sees a potential future market for standardized claims on compute capacity but notes technical, regulatory, and market-design hurdles remain.

Stablecoins are identified as the likely leading payment instrument due to their stable value, making them more practical for pricing and settlement than volatile cryptoassets. The report cites data showing that stablecoins had over $300 billion in circulating market capitalization as of September 2026 and adjusted transaction volume exceeded $11 trillion in 2025.

BlackRock emphasizes that a functional system would require authorization, identity checks, transaction limits, fraud controls, and records to show what the user permitted the agent to do. Several emerging protocols are intended to address parts of this stack, including Google's Agent2Agent protocol and Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol.