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

The modern financial system was not designed 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 economic activities, this human-centric design is becoming a bottleneck, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of crypto firm Alchemy. Viswanathan argues that cryptocurrency was actually built for AI agents, not humans. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks have limited operating hours because humans do, payments are tied to countries because people live in them, and credit cards assume physical identity and presence. AI agents, on the other hand, operate differently. They do not require 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 AI agents are online and 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 crypto infrastructure company, provides the underlying tools and services that developers need to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services. Traditional finance assumes friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. For humans, this is normal, but for AI agents, it is impractical. AI agents need to transact seamlessly across borders, at any time, often in small increments, and require 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. What has long made cryptocurrency challenging for humans, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, AI agents operate natively in code, and cryptocurrency's underlying architecture was never really built for humans. 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. Looking ahead, AI agents will sit on top of cryptocurrency infrastructure, handling complexity automatically, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, making it easier for people to control their funds. The result will be a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more autonomous, with a layered future consisting of traditional finance and cryptocurrency as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that.