# BlackRock Maps Crypto’s Role in the AI Economy

*Author: David Feld*
*Published: Sep 23, 2026*
*Source: https://www.bankless.com/read/blackrock-maps-crypto-s-role-in-the-ai-economy*

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BlackRock says the rise of autonomous AI agents could drive demand for stablecoins, blockchains, and eventually entirely new markets around compute. 

## What’s the Scoop?

- **Agents need machine money:** In a new paper on the [“Machine-Native Economy”](https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/literature/whitepaper/the-machine-native-economy.pdf), BlackRock argues AI agents will increasingly need payment infrastructure built for 24/7, high-frequency, often tiny transactions for APIs, data, and compute — or, in other words, blockchains and stablecoins. 

- **Compute gets financialized:** As compute becomes a larger economic input, BlackRock expects markets to emerge for pricing, financing, hedging, and trading access to it. That could eventually mean standardized claims on future compute capacity that can be tokenized, transferred, used as collateral, and settled programmatically, alongside markets like compute futures. 

- **Inference ties it together:** This becomes more important as inference, actually running AI models, grows relative to training. BlackRock cites projections showing inference rising from 25% of data-center power demand in 2025 to 43% by 2030, creating a much more fragmented, continuous market for compute. Eventually, agents could shop for compute in real time and pay for it per use, per job, or even per model token through protocols like x402.
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