BlackRock says AI could create a new class of stablecoin customer: machines that spend continuously without human approval.
The world’s largest asset manager sees increasingly autonomous AI systems purchasing data, accessing software, and acquiring computing resources on their own, potentially adding a new source of transaction demand to digital assets beyond trading and human payments.
That prospect sits at the center of BlackRock’s new report, The Machine-Native Economy, which argues that artificial intelligence could eventually change who initiates economic activity. Instead of people making individual payment decisions, software could execute thousands of small transactions to complete a task.
Stablecoins enter that market with more than $300 billion already in circulation and about $11.2 trillion of adjusted transaction volume in 2025, according to BlackRock. The firm calculated that volume grew at an 80% compound annual rate between 2020 and 2025, compared with roughly 8.5% for the US Automated Clearing House (ACH) network.
ACH still processed about $93 trillion last year, reflecting how far stablecoins remain from the largest traditional payment rails. BlackRock also cautioned against directly comparing stablecoin activity with Visa and Mastercard because the networks measure transactions differently.
The potentially bigger shift, however, is in transaction behavior rather than existing volume.
An AI agent searching for information or computing capacity could pay repeatedly for individual API calls, data feeds, or units of processing power. Those transactions may be worth fractions of a cent and occur around the clock, creating a payment pattern markedly different from card purchases or bank transfers designed primarily around human customers.
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