BlackRock research paper examines AI’s impact on digital assets

BlackRock, the firm managing roughly $150 billion in digital assets, has published research laying out a framework for how artificial intelligence could reshape the digital asset economy. The core argument is straightforward: as AI matures from infrastructure buildout to mass adoption, it will drag the crypto market along with it, primarily through stablecoins and rising demand for computational power. BlackRock maps AI’s evolution across three distinct phases: buildout, adoption, and transformation. The buildout phase, happening now, centers on the physical stuff, things like data centers, specialized chips, and the energy infrastructure to power them. By 2030, annual investment in AI infrastructure could exceed $700 billion, representing over 2% of US GDP. That’s a lot of capital looking for efficient settlement rails, and BlackRock thinks digital assets will be the ones to provide them. Stablecoins as the connective tissue By late November 2025, the stablecoin market cap surpassed $250 billion. BlackRock’s argument is that as AI systems increasingly handle financial transactions, trade settlement, and cross-border payments, they’ll need programmable money that moves at digital s...