Alchemy's CEO Claims Crypto Was Designed for AI Agents, Not Humans

The current financial system was not designed with machines in mind, but rather around human limitations such as geographical location, sleep patterns, paperwork, and physical presence. However, as AI agents become increasingly involved in economic activities, this human-centric design is becoming a bottleneck, 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 in various aspects of traditional finance, such as banks having operating hours, payments being tied to countries, and credit cards requiring physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate differently, as they do not require sleep, have no physical location, and do not use banks or credit cards. Moreover, they are increasingly capable of conducting transactions on their own. All transactions conducted by agents are online and 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 based on the assumption of friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. However, for AI agents, this is impractical. Agents require seamless, borderless transactions, often in small increments, as well as programmability and direct control over funds via code. They also require systems that do not rely on physical infrastructure or identity. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. According to Viswanathan, what has long made cryptocurrency challenging for humans, such as seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is precisely what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, 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. Just as email is more powerful than the postal system because it is designed for computers, cryptocurrency is similar. In the future, AI agents will operate on top of cryptocurrency infrastructure, handling complexity automatically, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, allowing people to control their funds more easily. Viswanathan envisions a layered future, with 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.