BlackRock’s latest research argues that artificial intelligence and digital assets are increasingly converging as machines take a larger role in economic activity. The paper says large language models and blockchains share analogous tokenization architectures, while AI-agent commerce will require machine-native payment rails and rising demand for computing could create a major new crypto market. The analysis places digital assets alongside intelligence, business and computing in an emerging economic framework, identifying stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, native cryptoassets, micropayments and computing-resource markets as key areas of convergence. BlackRock said stablecoin supply exceeded $300 billion, adjusted transaction volume surpassed $11 trillion in 2025 and reached $8.5 trillion in the first half of 2026. It also cited a preliminary Bitcoin Policy Institute study in which 36 frontier AI models selected Bitcoin for storing value 79.1% of the time and stablecoins for spending 53.2% of the time. The report is forward-looking and not a forecast. Separately, Cardano was added to the x402 software kit, enabling applications and AI agents to pay with ADA and other tokens issued on its network. x402 was created by Coinbase and later contributed to a Linux Foundation-backed organization whose members include Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google and Amazon Web Services.