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BlackRock flags AI as crypto’s next big use case, not token boom

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BlackRock’s head of digital assets, Robbie Mitchnick, signaled a shift in how large investors view crypto, pointing to artificial intelligence (AI) as a more meaningful driver than the expansion of new tokens.

Speaking about client behavior, Mitchnick described a market that has moved away from broad exposure to smaller assets. He said the turnover among top tokens has been “pretty ferocious,” with only bitcoin and, later, ether (ETH) maintaining consistent positions. Many newer tokens, he suggested, fail to hold long-term relevance.

That pattern has shaped investor demand. “The majority of that is nonsense,” Mitchnick said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday, referring to the vast number of tokens in circulation. As a result, clients now focus on a narrow set of assets rather than building wide portfolios. Bitcoin and Ethereum dominate allocations, with limited interest beyond those names.

Against that backdrop, Mitchnick pointed to AI as a more significant force shaping crypto’s future role. He stressed that AI is a larger theme than digital assets, but said the two intersect in ways that could matter.

“AI agents are very unlikely to use, you know, Fedwire and SWIFT,” he said. “What is crypto? Crypto is computer-native money… AI is computer-native data and intelligence. And so there’s a natural symbiosis there.”

That framing casts crypto less as a speculative asset class and more as infrastructure. A growing number of bitcoin miners have begun shifting resources toward AI workloads, drawn by steadier revenue and rising demand for computing power. Several listed miners, including Hut 8 (HUT), Core Scientific (CORZ) and Iren (IREN), are either repurposing data centers or signing hosting deals tied to AI and high-performance computing. Others have signaled similar plans, even if mining remains their core business.

Mitchnick also linked AI-driven disruption to bitcoin’s appeal. As new technologies reshape industries and create uncertainty, he suggested bitcoin may serve as a stabilizing allocation. It can act as a diversifier during periods of rapid change.

“There are intersection points that are relevant… there’s clearly an advantage and an opportunity to play a role in the AI economy,” he said.

BTC reclaims $70,000 on Iran ceasefire report

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A down day in crypto became slightly less so in the minutes since U.S. stocks closed for the session.

According to Israeli Channel 12, a one-month ceasefire could soon be announced as part of a package being negotiated by White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Other terms of the deal reportedly include a dismantling of Iran’s existing nuclear capabilities and that country’s vow to “never seek” nuclear weapons.

The news was felt most immediately in the oil market, with Brent Crude dropping from $104 to below $100 in a few minutes.

Trading down throughout the day and sitting near $69,000, bitcoin quickly popped back to $70,000. U.S. stock index futures also posted small gains on the news.

Circle Stock Dives as Rival Tether Secures Big Four Audit, Crypto Bill Threatens Stablecoin Yield

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In brief

  • Circle’s CRCL shares dropped 20% on Tuesday following a recent surge in value for the firm’s stock.
  • Stablecoin giant Tether announced a long-awaited agreement for an audit from a “Big Four” accounting firm.
  • Lawmakers are reviewing compromise language to the Clarity Act market structure bill that could impact stablecoin yield.

Stablecoin issuer Circle saw its stock take a 20% dive Tuesday following a double shot of potentially concerning news for the firm behind the prominent USDC stablecoin.

As of the close of trading, CRCL changed hands for $101.24, falling just over 20% on the day—and it’s ticking down further in after-hours trading thus far, as of this writing. Shares of the closely aligned crypto exchange Coinbase also fell nearly 10% on the day, finishing at $181.04.

Early Tuesday, stablecoin rival Tether—issuer of the largest stablecoin by market cap, USDT—said that it had agreed to undergo a full audit by an unnamed “Big Four” accounting firm, one of the last potential hurdles to compliance with the U.S. GENIUS Act. That could make Tether a bigger domestic threat to Circle in the future.

Circle’s share price may also have been impacted by the latest developments with another piece of legislation, the proposed Clarity Act market structure bill that’s still being revised by lawmakers. Crypto lobbyists reviewed compromise language regarding stablecoin yield on Monday, with the banking lobby currently reviewing to see if they’ll get onboard with the version of the language put together by Senators Alsobrooks and Tillis and the White House.

Speculation over the reported Clarity Act draft has echoed across social media as crypto industry players grapple with the potential impacts if restrictions on stablecoin yield make it into the final version of the bill—and it’s ultimately passed.

At the time of writing, Coinbase has been offering 3.5% rewards for USDC balances held on its premium Coinbase One platform. The company just ended its USDC rewards program for free exchange users in December. At the time, it had been advertising 4.5% rewards for Coinbase One users, but has since adjusted its rewards rate.

Coinbase competitor Kraken has been offering up to 5% rewards on USDC balances held on its platform. And Binance, the largest centralized crypto exchange by volume, pays users 5.63% on USDC balances held in its wallets. Binance used to offer its own stablecoin, BUSD, but stopped minting new tokens after its issuing partner Paxos ran afoul of New York regulators, who alleged the firm hadn’t done enough due diligence.

Analysts have otherwise been optimistic about Circle. The company’s shares have gained 170% since early February, far outpacing other crypto stocks and the struggling broader stock market.

Just last week, Clear Street analyst Owen Lau raised the firm’s price target for CRCL to $152 after noting that Mastercard’s $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK, a stablecoin payments infrastructure firm, was bullish for the space.

The CRCL surge had also been driven by a blowout earnings report. Circle announced 72% growth in its USDC stablecoin to $75.3 billion and 77% revenue growth to $770 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, triggering a 35% single-day gain that rippled across crypto markets.

A higher-for-longer interest-rate outlook, reinforced by geopolitical tensions and rising oil prices, had also boosted Circle’s earnings prospects, since the company earns substantial interest on reserves backing its USDC stablecoin.

At the time of writing, there’s more than $78 billion worth of USDC tokens in circulation, and an equivalent worth of cash or cash-like investments being held by its issuer to back those stablecoins.

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Cryptography Firm Zama Brings FHE Privacy to T‑REX Ledger

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French cryptography startup Zama is integrating its protocol with Apex-backed T-REX Ledger to add a confidentiality layer for ERC-3643-based tokenized assets, a standard that lets issuers embed identity checks and transfer restrictions into tokenized securities.

Zama, which raised $73 million in Series A funding in 2024 to commercialize fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), said the integration is intended to make confidentiality a built-in feature of tokenized asset infrastructure rather than an added layer.

The integration is designed to allow institutions to use public blockchains without exposing sensitive positions and transaction data, an issue that has limited adoption of public networks for regulated assets.

The announcement comes amid a broader industry debate over how institutions should handle privacy onchain, with zero-knowledge systems, permissioned networks and FHE all competing to become part of the tokenization stack.

Related: T-REX Ledger launches to ease compliance for tokenized assets

Institutional users “shield” ERC‑3643 positions

Zama founder Rand Hindi told Cointelegraph that institutions using T-REX would be able to “shield” existing positions by wrapping ERC-3643 tokens into confidential equivalents, preserving balances 1:1 while encrypting future transfers and resulting balances end-to-end. 

Zama described T-REX Ledger as a neutral infrastructure layer built around ERC-3643, where identity and rules-based compliance sit in smart contracts and underlying Know Your Customer data stays offchain, allowing issuers to keep parameters such as interest rates, withholding taxes or liquidation thresholds confidential on public networks.

Hindi said this could reduce the traditional “trade-off” between regulatory compliance and confidentiality by pushing both into shared, programmable infrastructure rather than separate silos.

Competing privacy models are emerging

The integration comes as infrastructure providers debate how institutions should handle privacy and interoperability onchain.

Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski told Cointelegraph that zero-knowledge systems like zkSync’s Prividium were “the only way” that enterprises could “achieve real privacy and onchain interoperability,” particularly when they want private environments that can still settle atomically via Ethereum and other ZK domains.