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”, 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…