Crypto Designed for AI, Not Humans, According to Alchemy CEO

The current financial system was not created with machines in mind. Instead, it was built around human limitations such as geographical location, sleep patterns, paperwork, and physical presence. However, as AI agents start to participate in the economy, this human-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Alchemy co-founder Nikil Viswanathan. "One could argue that cryptocurrency was created for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan stated. The discrepancy is evident everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human constraints, payments are tied to countries because people live in them, and credit cards require physical identification and presence. AI agents, on the other hand, operate differently. They do not sleep, have no physical location, do not visit banks, and do not carry cards. Moreover, they are increasingly involved in transactions, not just assisting with tasks. All transactions for agents are conducted online and are inherently global, Viswanathan explained in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where cryptocurrency starts to look like the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor, rather than an alternative financial system. Alchemy, a cryptocurrency infrastructure company, provides developers with the necessary tools and services to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services that power various products such as financial apps, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and games. Traditional finance is based on the assumption of friction, where cross-border payments involve currency exchange, intermediaries, delays, and fees, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. Agents require seamless, borderless transactions at any time, often in small increments, and need programmability, direct control over money via code, and systems that do not rely on physical infrastructure or identity. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. "Cryptocurrency is the global infrastructure for money that agents need," Viswanathan said. The complexity that has long made cryptocurrency difficult for humans, such as seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is precisely what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code, reading in zeros and ones, which is also the language of cryptocurrency. For years, cryptocurrency has tried to become more human-friendly, but its underlying architecture was never designed for humans in the first place. Viswanathan compared the shift from cryptocurrency tools being built primarily for humans to cryptocurrency tools being used by AI agents to the shift from the postal system to the internet. While people once had to physically write a letter, buy a stamp, and mail it to share messages globally, modern communication is much faster. "Email is far more powerful than the postal system because it is designed for computers," Viswanathan said. "Cryptocurrency is similar." Looking ahead, Viswanathan believes that AI agents will sit on top of cryptocurrency infrastructure, handling complexity automatically, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, allowing people to control their funds more easily. "You can write code to manage a cryptocurrency wallet," Viswanathan said. "You can't write code to manage a bank account in the same way." The result would be a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more autonomous. Viswanathan envisions a layered future: traditional finance and cryptocurrency as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that. "Just like computers operate the internet and humans use it, agents will operate finance," he said.