BlackRock's digital assets research team argues that autonomous AI agents will need to pay for data, compute and API calls on their own, and that stablecoins are best placed to handle those payments. The paper names Ethereum and Circle's Arc as potential settlement rails, while acknowledging that agent-driven payment volume barely exists yet.
BlackRock has published a research paper arguing that autonomous AI agents could become a significant new source of demand for stablecoins and the blockchains that settle them. The paper, titled The Machine-Native Economy, names Ethereum and Circle's Arc as potential settlement venues, was released this week by BlackRock's digital assets research team.
Why agents need a different rail
An AI agent completing a task, such as booking travel or running an extended analysis, may need to pay repeatedly for API calls, data feeds and processing power. Those payments are often worth fractions of a cent and can happen at any hour. BlackRock argues that card networks and ACH are less suited to that pattern, since account setup can require human involvement and merchant fees make tiny payments uneconomic. It points to x402, an open payment protocol developed by Coinbase, as one emerging standard. The protocol lets machines pay in stablecoins such as USDC.
The scale argument
BlackRock backs the case with scale data. Stablecoins had more than $300 billion in circulation as of September. Adjusted transaction volume topped $11 trillion in 2025, growing at an 80% compound annual rate since 2020, against about 8.5% for ACH. ACH still moved around $93 trillion last year, however, and BlackRock notes its stablecoin and card network figures are not directly comparable.
A widely cited $5 trillion figure needs context: it refers to outside estimates of cumulative AI capital spending between 2025 and 2030, not a stablecoin market size. BlackRock uses it to frame a second thesis, that compute itself is becoming an investable resource. It says standardised compute contracts could eventually be tokenized and traded as exchange-traded futures, citing Stripe's August deal to acquire OpenRouter as an early signal.
What it means for ETH
The benefit to Ethereum users and the demand for ETH itself are separate questions. More stablecoin settlement on Ethereum could lift demand for blockspace and validator services, but BlackRock says any value capture depends on each network's fee, staking and gas-sponsorship design. On Arc, USDC itself pays transaction fees, so growth there would deepen USDC's utility rather than create demand for a separate token.
This is a research thesis, not a purchase, product launch or fund filing, and the authors concede that agentic payment activity and compute market liquidity remain limited. FinTech Weekly has noted that the customers BlackRock describes have not yet arrived, and that tokenized bank deposits could weaken the case for stablecoins as the default rail.
Source: Investinglive
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