Autonomous AI agents will require machine-native payment rails and programmable settlements to operate independently, BlackRock's latest research says. The investment firm identifies these agentic systems as a primary catalyst for the adoption of digital assets, as they create demand for tokenized access to compute and always-on transaction capabilities that traditional finance cannot provide.

Stablecoins will likely lead transactional use in machine-to-machine commerce by serving as the payment layer for AI agents. BlackRock's analysis suggests that as AI adoption expands, the convergence of these technologies will make digital assets integral to the underlying economic infrastructure of the AI economy.