BlackRock’s head of digital assets Robbie Mitchnick has signaled a shift in how big investors view crypto, pointing to artificial intelligence (AI) as a more significant 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 turnover among major tokens had been “pretty fierce”, with only bitcoin. and, later, ether (ETH) maintaining consistent positions. Many newer tokens, he suggested, are irrelevant in the long term.
This trend has shaped investor demand. “The majority of this is nonsense,” Mitchnick said Tuesday at the Digital Asset Summit in New York, referring to the large number of tokens in circulation. As a result, clients are now focusing on a narrow set of assets rather than building large portfolios. Bitcoin and Ethereum dominate allocations, with limited interest beyond these names.
In this context, Mitchnick highlighted AI as a larger force that will shape the future role of crypto. He emphasized that AI is a broader theme than digital assets, but said the two intersect in ways that could matter.
“AI agents are very unlikely to use Fedwire and SWIFT,” he said. “What is crypto? Crypto is money that is native to the computer… AI is data and intelligence that is native to the computer. So there is a natural symbiosis there.”
This framework presents crypto less as a speculative asset class and more as infrastructure. A growing number of Bitcoin miners have begun to shift their resources toward AI workloads, attracted by more stable revenues and growing demand for computing power. Several listed miners, including Hut 8 (HUT), Core Scientific (CORZ) and Iren (IREN), are either revamping their data centers or signing hosting deals related to AI and high-performance computing. Others have announced similar projects, although mining remains their main activity.
Mitchnick also linked the disruption caused by AI to the appeal of Bitcoin. As new technologies reshape industries and create uncertainty, he suggested bitcoin could serve as a stabilizing allocation. This can act as a diversification factor during periods of rapid change.
“There are intersection points that are relevant…there is clearly an advantage and an opportunity to play a role in the AI economy,” he said.
