BlackRock’s head of digital assets, Robbie Mitchnick, signaled a shift in how major investors view crypto, pointing to artificial intelligence (AI) as a more meaningful driver than the expansion of new tokens.
In terms of client behavior, Mitchnick described a market that has moved away from broad exposure to smaller assets. He said turnover among the top tokens has been “pretty fierce” with just bitcoin and later, ether (ETH), maintaining uniform positions. Many newer tokens, he suggested, do not have long-term relevance.
That pattern has shaped investor demand. “Most of it is nonsense,” Mitchnick said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday, referring to the sheer number of tokens in circulation. As a result, clients are now focusing on a narrow set of assets rather than building broad portfolios. Bitcoin and Ethereum dominate limited interest allocations beyond these names.
Against that backdrop, Mitchnick pointed to artificial intelligence as a more significant force shaping crypto’s future role. He emphasized that AI is a bigger theme than digital assets, but said the two intersect in ways that can 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. So there’s a natural symbiosis there.”
This 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 stable revenues and increasing 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 artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Others have signaled similar plans, although 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 that bitcoin can serve as a stabilizing allocation. It can act as a diversification during periods of rapid change.
“There are intersections that are relevant … there is clearly an advantage and an opportunity to play a role in the AI economy,” he said.
