BlackRock Says AI Agents Need ‘Machine-Native Money': Is Bitcoin Their Savings Account?

A research paper published by BlackRock outlines the necessity for machine-native money to support the expanding ecosystem of autonomous artificial intelligence agents. The asset manager argues that legacy payment infrastructure, such as credit card networks and ACH transfers, is ill-suited for AI software requiring instant, sub-dollar, and continuous round-the-clock settlement without human intervention. Consequently, stablecoins and native cryptocurrencies are positioned as primary transaction and settlement layers. The paper highlights a two-tier monetary system where stablecoins act as spending instruments while Bitcoin serves as a store of value. Citing a study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute analyzing 36 frontier AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, and DeepSeek, Bitcoin was selected as the preferred store of value 79.1% of the time, while stablecoins were chosen for spending in 53.2% of instances, compared to under 9% for traditional fiat banking rails. The growing scale of stablecoins, with circulating supply exceeding $300 billion and transaction volumes reaching $11 trillion in 2025 alongside $8.5 trillion in H1 2026, reinforces the institutional case for digital asset adoption in automated machine economies.