Alchemy CEO Claims Crypto is Better Suited for AI Agents Than Humans

The current financial system was designed with human constraints in mind, such as geographical limitations, sleep patterns, and physical presence. However, with AI agents emerging as economic participants, this human-centric design is becoming a bottleneck, says Alchemy co-founder Nikil Viswanathan. He argues that crypto was built for AI agents, not humans, as it operates without the need for physical presence, sleep, or geographical boundaries. Viswanathan notes that traditional finance is built around human limitations, such as operating hours, country-specific payments, and credit cards that require physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate globally, don't require sleep, and can transact seamlessly online. This is where crypto becomes the native infrastructure for a new kind of economic actor, according to Viswanathan. Alchemy, a crypto infrastructure company, provides tools and services for developers to build blockchain-based applications, enabling companies to create and scale on-chain products without managing the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Viswanathan believes that traditional finance assumes friction, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. Crypto, on the other hand, offers a global, always-on financial layer where value can move as easily as data, making it the ideal infrastructure for AI agents. What has long made crypto difficult for humans, such as seed phrases and private keys, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines, 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, where communication became much faster and more powerful. He envisions a future where AI agents sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically and managing wallets, transactions, and capital flows in real-time, allowing people to control their funds more easily. This would result in a more global, programmable, and autonomous financial system, with a layered structure consisting of traditional finance and crypto as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that.