The plumbing of a machine-native economy—and the water that isn't flowing yet.

Is the era where AI carries its own wallet and handles payments autonomously truly just around the corner? In September 2026, the major US asset manager BlackRock released a white paper titled "The Machine-Native Economy," analyzing the relationship between AI and digital assets.

The company characterized AI as "machine-native intelligence" and crypto assets as "machine-native money"—meaning both are systems designed to be utilized by machines rather than humans. It identified three key points of intersection between the two: tokenization, machine-to-machine (M2M) payments, and computing resources ("compute").

Of particular importance to the company are payments executed by AI agents—AI systems capable of making their own decisions and completing tasks without detailed human instruction. Payments triggered whenever AI accesses external services or data involve amounts as small as a few yen or less per transaction, yet occur continuously, around the clock.

Such transactions are ill-suited for existing payment networks, which rely on account-opening procedures and high transaction fees. To accommodate this need, a set of common rules—or payment standards—enabling AI to make payments has rapidly emerged over the past year. These include Coinbase’s "x402" (402 Payment Required); the "MPP" (Machine Payments Protocol) jointly developed by Stripe and Tempo; Stripe and OpenAI’s "ACP" (Agentic Commerce Protocol); and Google’s "AP2" (Agent Payments Protocol). Notably, in April 2026, x402 transitioned from Coinbase’s control to become an industry-standard managed by a joint foundation, with participants including Google, Visa, and even Mastercard.

Stablecoins are considered the leading candidate for these payment transactions. According to the company’s data, transaction volume in 2025 exceeded $11 trillion—a figure calculated after excluding automated bot trading and internal fund transfers within exchanges. The annual growth rate is projected to reach approximately 80% between 2020 and 2025—a pace of expansion that far outstrips the growth of the U.S. Automated Clearing House (ACH) network, which handles salary deposits and direct debits.

By September 2026, the market capitalization of the assets in circulation is expected to exceed $300 billion. However, the original source notes that direct comparisons with Visa or Mastercard are not possible due to differing measurement methodologies. It also acknowledges that the figure remains far below the $93 trillion in annual transaction volume processed by the ACH.

A move to treat the raw computing power that drives AI as a tradable "commodity"—much like crude oil or gold—is already underway. Goldman Sachs estimates that cumulative AI-related capital expenditure by four major tech giants—Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta—will reach $5.3 trillion between 2025 and 2030. Amidst these developments, CME Group has partnered with Silicon Data to launch a new futures contract on October 5. This product enables the trading of future prices for the cost of leasing AI-oriented semiconductors. ICE has also announced a competing product.