Alchemy CEO Claims Crypto Was Designed for AI Agents, Not Humans

The existing financial system was not designed with machines in mind, but rather around human limitations such as geographical constraints, sleep patterns, paperwork, and physical presence. However, as AI agents start to participate in economic activities, this human-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Alchemy co-founder Nikil Viswanathan. Viswanathan argues that cryptocurrency was essentially built for AI agents, not humans. The discrepancy is evident everywhere: banks have limited operating hours because humans do, payments are tied to countries because people live in them, and credit cards require physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate differently as they do not sleep, have no physical location, and do not use banks or credit cards. Instead, they transact online and are inherently global. As a result, cryptocurrency is starting to look like the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor. Alchemy, a crypto infrastructure company, provides the necessary tools and services for developers to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services. Traditional finance is based on the assumption of friction, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. Agents require seamless transactions across borders, often in small increments, and need programmability and direct control over money via code. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can move as easily as data. What has long made cryptocurrency challenging for humans, such as seed phrases and private keys, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines, as they operate natively in code. The shift from crypto tools being built primarily for humans to being used by AI agents is comparable to the shift from the postal system to the internet. In the future, AI agents will sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically and managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, making it easier for people to control their funds. This will result in a more global, programmable, and autonomous financial system, with a layered structure consisting of traditional finance and crypto as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that.