Is Blockchain Becoming the Financial Infrastructure for Machine Economies?

Franklin Templeton is making a broader case for blockchain than cryptocurrency investing.

Rather than positioning digital assets primarily as speculative investments, the global asset manager argues that blockchain infrastructure could become the payment and settlement layer underpinning the next generation of artificial intelligence.

In a new research paper, Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Industry Advisory Services at Franklin Templeton, said autonomous AI agents will require payment infrastructure capable of supporting machine-to-machine commerce—something she argues existing financial networks were not designed to provide.

The report reflects a growing institutional narrative that blockchain's long-term value may lie less in retail cryptocurrency trading and more in powering emerging digital economies.

AI Agents Need More Than Traditional Payments

Unlike conversational AI tools that respond to user prompts, agentic AI systems are designed to make decisions and execute tasks independently once authorized.

They can purchase data, book travel, pay for cloud computing resources, subscribe to software services and coordinate complex workflows without requiring human approval for every transaction.

Franklin Templeton argues that this shift fundamentally changes payment requirements.

Traditional financial infrastructure was built around human-initiated transactions processed through banks and card networks. Autonomous software, by contrast, could generate thousands of low-value transactions across multiple services within minutes.

That creates operational demands that extend beyond traditional payment models.

Blockchain Becomes Financial Infrastructure

The report argues blockchain networks provide characteristics that align more closely with autonomous commerce.

Unlike conventional payment networks, blockchain combines transaction recording and settlement within a single infrastructure layer, reducing reliance on multiple intermediaries.

Franklin Templeton also pointed to advances in blockchain scalability.

While Bitcoin and Ethereum process relatively limited transaction volumes, newer blockchain networks including Aptos, Solana and BNB Chain have demonstrated throughput levels comparable to major payment networks under certain conditions, while also enabling near-real-time settlement.

The report argues this distinction becomes increasingly important when software—not humans—is initiating payments continuously.

Industry Momentum Extends Beyond Crypto

Franklin Templeton's thesis comes as both technology and financial companies expand efforts around AI-native payments.

Coinbase has introduced infrastructure enabling AI agents to transact autonomously using cryptocurrency wallets.

Google unveiled a payment protocol for AI agents in 2025 with support from the Ethereum Foundation.

Meanwhile, the recently launched x402 Foundation—which includes Visa, Mastercard, AWS and dozens of technology companies—is developing open internet payment standards designed specifically for software-to-software transactions.

Taken together, these initiatives suggest that competition is expanding beyond AI models themselves toward the financial infrastructure required to support autonomous digital commerce.

A New Institutional Investment Thesis

Franklin Templeton also argues that widespread adoption of agentic AI could reshape how investors view blockchain networks.

If autonomous software increasingly pays for compute, data, APIs and digital services using blockchain-native assets, demand for those networks may become tied to economic activity rather than speculative trading.

Instead of viewing cryptocurrencies solely as investment assets, the report suggests they could increasingly function as the operating currencies of machine-driven digital economies.

That represents a notable evolution in institutional thinking.

For years, much of the investment case around blockchain focused on token prices and cryptocurrency adoption. Franklin Templeton's analysis shifts the conversation toward infrastructure, arguing that blockchain's long-term value may ultimately depend on whether it becomes the settlement layer for autonomous commerce.

As AI systems move from generating content to executing transactions, the question may no longer be whether blockchain has a practical use case—but whether future digital economies can operate efficiently without it.