Alchemy CEO Claims Crypto Was Designed for AI, Not Humans

The current financial system was never intended for machines, having been built around human limitations such as geographical constraints, sleep patterns, and physical presence. However, as AI agents begin to participate in the economy, this human-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. "You could argue that crypto was built for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan said. The discrepancy is apparent everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human constraints, payments are tied to countries because humans live in them, and credit cards require physical identity and presence. AI agents, on the other hand, operate differently. They do not sleep, have no physical location, and do not use banks or credit cards. Increasingly, they are not just assisting with tasks but also conducting transactions. All transactions for agents are online and inherently global, Viswanathan explained. 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. Traditional finance is built on the assumption of friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. For humans, this is normal, but for AI agents, it is impractical. Agents require seamless, borderless transactions at any time, often in small increments, as well as programmability and direct control over money via code. Crypto offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. The complexity that has long made crypto challenging for humans, such as seed phrases and private keys, is precisely what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code, and their native language is zeros and ones, which is also the language of crypto. For years, crypto has attempted to become more human-friendly, but its underlying architecture was never designed for humans. 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. Moving forward, AI agents will sit 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 will be a financial system that is more global, programmable, and autonomous. Viswanathan envisions 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.