Franklin Templeton sees AI agents driving blockchain demand

A senior executive at the global investment firm Franklin Templeton has argued that the rise of autonomous artificial intelligence agents will create a major new demand driver for blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies. In a detailed post on social media platform X on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, Sandy Kaul, the firm's head of digital assets and innovation, stated that AI agents represent the next "killer use case" for blockchain technology.

Kaul's central thesis is that the emerging "agentic AI economy" will require payment infrastructure capable of handling high-frequency, low-value machine-to-machine micropayments. She contends that traditional card networks, built for human-scale commerce, are unsuitable for this purpose due to their relatively high fees and settlement times of one to three business days. In contrast, blockchain protocols like Aptos, Solana, and BNB Chain can settle transactions in seconds, making them better aligned with the needs of autonomous software that may need to pay for services like computing power or data access in fractions of a cent.

This perspective aligns with a joint report published last week by payments giant Visa and the investment thesis...