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

The current 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 the economy, this human-centric design is becoming a bottleneck, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. Viswanathan stated, 'You can argue that crypto was 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 require physical identification and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate differently. They do not sleep, have no physical location, do not visit banks, and do not carry cards. Moreover, they are increasingly capable of performing transactions on their own. All transactions conducted by agents are online and inherently global, Viswanathan explained in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where crypto begins to resemble the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor, rather than an alternative financial system. Alchemy, a crypto infrastructure company, provides developers with the necessary tools and services to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services. These services enable companies to create and scale on-chain products without having to manage the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Traditional finance is built on the assumption of friction, where cross-border payments involve currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. While this may be normal for humans, it is impractical 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. Crypto offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. According to Viswanathan, 'Crypto is the global infrastructure for money that agents need.' What has long made crypto challenging for humans, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is precisely what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code. Viswanathan compared the shift from crypto tools being built primarily for humans to crypto tools being used by AI agents to the transition from the postal system to the internet. Just as email is more powerful than the postal system because it is designed for computers, crypto is similar. Viswanathan envisions a future where AI agents will operate on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, allowing people to control their funds more easily. The result would be a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more autonomous. Viswanathan sees a layered future: traditional finance and crypto 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.