BlackRock Just Made a Bold Prediction About AI and Stablecoins. Here's What Crypto Investors Need to Know.

Up until recently, this year has largely been a difficult one for the crypto sector. Crypto slumped into a crypto winter for several reasons. One of them was that other impressive technologies, like artificial intelligence, seemed to steal some of crypto's thunder, with investors worried that blockchain encryption may not be secure against AI.

Recently, however, crypto has bounced back somewhat, and now a team of researchers at BlackRock see a world where crypto doesn't necessarily compete with or get weakened by AI but actually serves as a perfect complement to AI agents. Here's what crypto investors need to know.

Stablecoins could become a go-to payments rail for AI

In a new white paper from BlackRock, the research team notes many similarities between AI and blockchain technology. For instance, large language models break down human language into tokens and use the numbers to interpret how to respond and determine what to do next. Blockchain, on the other hand, reflects economic value through digital asset tokens that are specifically designed to be verified and settled by machines.

These similarities could make the blockchain ideal for AI agents because it operates 24/7 and doesn't require human intervention to complete transactions. The report examined three key overlapping opportunities at the intersection of AI and crypto. The first was the similarities between the architecture on which AI and blockchain are built. The second is how agentic AI and machine-to-machine payments would likely increase the need for blockchain networks, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and other on-chain assets.

And the third is how AI compute could create new use cases for digital assets. The report concludes that AI could serve as a structural catalyst for digital asset adoption to help power the AI economy:

AI interprets information and directs action, while blockchains provide machine-readable assets and programmable settlement. This relationship remains underappreciated and could expand the role of digital assets as core infrastructure for an increasingly autonomous digital economy.

If you think about it, there's a certain logic to all of this. AI is already capable of automating digital workflows. What if a human could tell an AI agent not only to go find the cheapest set of kitchen knives, but also to purchase them with funds the agent is granted access to once it finds a product that meets all of a person's requirements?

The fastest and potentially cheapest route could be to leverage blockchain technology using stablecoins or other cryptocurrencies. The report notes that existing payment rails are not well suited to high-volume, low-dollar agentic transactions. That's because traditional rails require account setup, credentials, and authorization processes requiring human involvement as well as merchant acceptance fees that may make quick, cheaper transactions less economical.

However, the report notes that traditional payment systems will remain critical for connecting agents with human-run businesses and consumers working in business-to-machine and consumer-to-machine settings. Stablecoins, digital assets pegged to a commodity or currency like the U.S. dollar, will likely be the leading choice for agentic commerce, the report notes. Research from the Bitcoin Policy Institute also indicated that AI model outputs in controlled simulations favored stablecoins for daily payments.

Lastly, the BlackRock report discussed how digital tokens could be used as AI compute, becoming an “investable economic resource.” Digital assets could be used to price and allocate capacity and to carry out activities such as financing and hedging.

Investors should look at the best technical blockchains

While I certainly find this white paper intriguing, predicting how blockchain or crypto will be used is never easy. After all, crypto was created as an alternative currency, though that use case never really took off. Many people buy cryptocurrencies as an investment, while some people buy Bitcoin as a form of digital gold.

Stablecoins are also very interesting, given their ability to leverage the benefits of digital assets and blockchain technology, while maintaining a fixed value like the dollar and removing the inherent volatility associated with most cryptocurrencies. But it's tough to say whether people, at least in developed countries, would truly prefer stablecoins over traditional payment methods. Large payment companies and networks are already starting to use stablecoins to help settle payments behind the scenes.

Ultimately, though, if blockchains and stablecoins end up being the payment rails for agentic AI, the networks -- and their respective tokens -- on which most stablecoin transactions are processed, such as Ethereum and Solana, could do well. This has been my thesis on blockchain all along. Aside from Bitcoin, which is unique, the only cryptocurrencies worth investing in are those with superior blockchain networks and a technical advantage.