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

The modern financial system was not designed with machines in mind, instead being built around the limitations of human life, including geographical constraints, sleep patterns, paperwork, and physical presence. However, as AI agents start to participate in the economy, this human-centric design is beginning to appear as a hindrance, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. 'It can be argued that cryptocurrency was built for AI agents, not humans,' Viswanathan stated. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks have limited operating hours due to human constraints, payments are tied to countries because people live in them, and credit cards assume 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. Moreover, they are increasingly involved in transactions, not just assisting with tasks. 'All transactions for agents are conducted online and are inherently global,' Viswanathan said in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where cryptocurrency starts to appear less like an alternative financial system and more like the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor, he explained. Alchemy, a crypto infrastructure company, provides the underlying tools and services that developers need to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services. These services enable companies to build and scale on-chain products without managing the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Traditional finance is based on the assumption of friction, where paying someone in another country involves currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. Agents require seamless transactions across borders at any time, often in small increments, and need programmability, direct control over money via code, and systems that do not depend on physical infrastructure or identity. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value moves as easily as data, according to Viswanathan. 'Cryptocurrency is the global infrastructure for money that agents need,' he said. The complexity of cryptocurrency, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines, Viswanathan explained. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code, with their native language being 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 built 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, communication in the modern era is much faster. 'Email is far more powerful than the postal system because it is designed for computers,' Viswanathan said. 'Cryptocurrency is similar.' Moving forward, 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 cannot 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, with 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.