BlackRock’s Digital Assets Research team released a report titled The Machine-Native Economy during the week of September 22, 2026. The document suggests that autonomous AI systems require programmable money, as traditional financial networks like ACH and credit cards are unsuitable for high-frequency, low-cost machine-to-machine transactions.
The report highlights that current settlement times and intermediary requirements act as bottlenecks for algorithms purchasing real-time data or GPU capacity. BlackRock also suggests the potential emergence of a new asset class linked to tokenized computing power, though regulatory standards for this sector remain in development.
Data shows that the circulating supply of stablecoins surpassed $300 billion by September 2026, with transaction volumes reaching $11 trillion in 2025. Since 2020, stablecoin transaction volume has grown at an annual rate of approximately 80%, compared to 8.5% for ACH.
According to TRM Labs, AI agents currently represent between 0.6% and 7.5% of activity on major payment protocols. Analysts estimate that cumulative investment in AI infrastructure will exceed $5 trillion by 2030, while cloud revenue for Amazon, Microsoft, and Google is projected to reach $1.1 trillion by the same year.
