BlackRock: AI Agents Could Drive Crypto’s Next Demand Wave

BlackRock's framing matters less as a price call than as a signal about where the largest asset manager sees structural demand originating: machine-to-machine settlement, not retail speculation. If agent payments become a real use case, the pressure lands on chains and rails that can handle high-frequency, low-value transactions, and on the stablecoin and compute-market infrastructure that would sit underneath them. Whether that demand materializes, or stays a narrative, is the open question — and it hinges on agents actually transacting on-chain at scale rather than just being discussed.