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

The current financial system was not designed with machines in mind, but rather around human limitations such as geographical location, sleep patterns, and physical presence. However, with AI agents increasingly participating in the economy, this human-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of Alchemy. Viswanathan suggests that cryptocurrency was, in fact, built for AI agents rather than humans. The traditional financial system is filled with human-centric limitations, such as banks having operating hours and payments being tied to specific countries. In contrast, AI agents do not require sleep, physical presence, or geographical location, and they are increasingly capable of conducting transactions on their own. According to Viswanathan, all transactions conducted by AI agents are online and inherently global. 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 necessary tools and services for developers to build blockchain-based applications, enabling 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, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, and fees. However, for AI agents, this is not viable, as they require seamless, programmable, and direct control over transactions. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that - a global, always-on financial layer where value can move as easily as data. The complexity of cryptocurrency, including seed phrases and private keys, is actually a strength when it comes to AI agents, as they operate natively in code. Viswanathan compares the shift from crypto tools being built for humans to being used by AI agents to the shift from the postal system to the internet. Just as email is more powerful than the postal system because it is designed for computers, cryptocurrency is more powerful because it is designed for machines. In the future, AI agents will sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically and managing transactions 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, with a layered structure consisting of traditional finance, crypto, an agent layer, and a human interface.