The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, says broad AI adoption could represent an underappreciated source of demand for digital assets.

In its latest research paper, “The Machine-Native Economy,” BlackRock said the rise of AI and machine-to-machine payments could increase demand for blockchains and other programmable payment infrastructure, including stablecoins and other on-chain assets. It also sees a potential opportunity for digital assets to support the compute market, allowing claims on computing capacity to be tokenized, traded and used as collateral.

“Together, these developments position AI as a structural catalyst for digital asset adoption and digital assets as a potential facilitator of the AI economy,”…