In BlackRock’s new paper, “The Machine-Native Economy,” the authors argue that AI agents will need payment rails built for machines, positioning stablecoins as the natural settlement instrument for agentic commerce. The paper also makes the case for compute as a new tokenized asset class, bringing the concept full circle by envisioning agents that autonomously provision processing capacity for specific tasks and pay for it with stablecoins. “Standardized claims on compute capacity could become a significant digital asset use case for financing and programmable settlement.”
We’ve covered stablecoins for agentic payments elsewhere, including agentic payment protocols such as x402 and MPP, and would support the BlackRock position, although in our view timing is a critical element. BlackRock doesn’t mention tokenized deposits, which can equally perform the same function. Several of the multi-bank tokenized deposit solutions have trialed the agentic payment use case, and some corporates prefer a more conventional approach. The key differentiator is that stablecoins are here today at scale on public chains, whereas most multi-bank tokenized deposit solutions are yet to launch. Timing is often the most critical factor in the success of companies, products and use cases. It isn’t a matter of being first, but being ready to scale when the big adoption wave arrives.
Given BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, its views on compute as a new digital asset class are noteworthy. Sell side analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg project $1.1 trillion in combined revenues from the three major hyperscalers AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Intelligent Cloud by 2030, with cumulative AI capital expenditure estimated at over $5 trillion between 2025 and 2030.
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