AI circuit board symbol rising above fading altcoin logos against a dark digital background.
BlackRock sees AI overtaking altcoins as the dominant force shaping crypto's next institutional cycle.

BlackRock's Robbie Mitchnick says institutional clients have written off most altcoins and are betting on AI as the force that gives crypto its next real use case. The firm sees BTC and ETH as the only assets that matter, and crypto itself as the money layer for an AI-driven economy.

Quick Insights

  • BlackRock's head of digital assets Robbie Mitchnick says institutional clients have narrowed their focus to bitcoin and ether, dismissing most other tokens as short-lived.
  • Mitchnick framed crypto as "computer-native money" that pairs naturally with AI's "computer-native data and intelligence," positioning the two as infrastructure for each other.
  • Several major bitcoin miners including Hut 8, Core Scientific, and Iren are already pivoting data centre capacity toward AI workloads, chasing steadier revenue.

The world's largest asset manager doesn't think the next crypto bull run will be led by a fresh wave of altcoins. BlackRock's head of digital assets, Robbie Mitchnick, told attendees at the Digital Asset Summit in New York that institutional clients have largely lost interest in broad token exposure. The money is concentrating around bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), and staying there.

Mitchnick was blunt about the rest of the market. Turnover among top tokens has been relentless, and most newer assets fail to hold any long-term relevance. He called the vast majority of tokens in circulation "nonsense," a word that carries extra weight coming from a firm with over $10 trillion under management.

What BlackRock's Crypto Thesis Looks Like Now

Large allocators aren't diversifying across dozens of tokens the way some did in earlier cycles. They're picking bitcoin, adding ether in some cases, and stopping there.

That's partly down to how brutal token rotation has been. Projects that sat in the top 20 two years ago have fallen off completely, replaced by assets that will probably do the same. For institutional money that thinks in multi-year horizons, that churn makes most of the market uninvestable. The portfolio strategy has gone from "get broad crypto exposure" to "own bitcoin, maybe own ether, ignore the rest."

Computer-Native Money Meets Computer-Native Intelligence

Where Robbie Mitchnick got interesting was in connecting crypto's future not to new tokens but to artificial intelligence. He argued AI is a far bigger theme than digital assets, but the two overlap in ways that could accelerate institutional crypto adoption.

His point was simple. AI systems that process data and make decisions autonomously will need payment rails built for machines, not humans. Fedwire and SWIFT weren't designed for that. Crypto was.

"AI agents are very unlikely to use Fedwire and SWIFT," Mitchnick said. The implication is that stablecoins and on-chain settlement end up as the default financial plumbing for an economy increasingly run by software that doesn't need a bank account.

Miners Are Already Repurposing for AI

This isn't just conference talk. Several publicly listed bitcoin miners have already started redirecting data centre capacity toward AI compute and high-performance workloads. Hut 8, Core Scientific, and Iren have either repurposed facilities or signed hosting deals tied to AI compute.

It makes sense when you think about it. Mining operations sit in large-scale data centres with serious power capacity. AI training needs the same thing. And the revenue from hosting AI workloads is more predictable than mining, which swings with bitcoin's price and network difficulty every few months.

Mitchnick also floated the idea that bitcoin itself benefits from the AI wave. As artificial intelligence reshapes industries and creates uncertainty, bitcoin's role as a non-correlated asset could make it useful as a diversifier. Not because it's part of the AI stack, but because it holds up when everything else is getting disrupted.

BlackRock's Message to Altcoin Bulls

When BlackRock talks, allocators listen. The message right now is that the next phase of institutional crypto adoption won't come from token launches or DeFi yields. It'll come from how well crypto positions itself as plumbing for the AI economy.

That's a completely different pitch from 2021. Back then it was yield farming and getting early on the next layer-1. Now it's about building the money layer for machines. Altcoin season might not be dead, but the smart money has already moved on to a different trade.

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