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

The traditional financial system was engineered with human constraints in mind, such as geographical boundaries, sleep patterns, and physical presence. However, as AI agents start to participate in economic activities, this human-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Alchemy co-founder Nikil Viswanathan. "One could argue that cryptocurrency was built for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan stated. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks operate within specific hours due to human limitations, payments are tied to countries because people reside in them, and credit cards assume physical identity and presence. AI agents, on the other hand, operate differently: they don't require sleep, don't have a physical presence, and don't use banks or credit cards. Moreover, they are increasingly capable of executing transactions. All transactions for AI agents are conducted online and are inherently global, Viswanathan explained in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where cryptocurrency starts to resemble 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. Traditional finance is built on the assumption of friction, such as currency exchanges, intermediaries, and fees, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. These agents require seamless transactions across borders, often in small increments, and need programmability and direct control over funds via code. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. The complexity that has long made cryptocurrency challenging for humans, such as seed phrases, private keys, and interacting with code, is precisely what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, AI agents operate natively in code and can read zeros and ones, which is also the language of cryptocurrency. For years, cryptocurrency has attempted 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 being used by AI agents to the transition from the postal system to the internet. While people once had to physically write letters and mail them to communicate globally, modern communication is much faster. "Email is far more powerful than the postal system because it's designed for computers," Viswanathan said. "Cryptocurrency is similar." Moving forward, AI agents will utilize 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.