Crypto Designed for AI Agents, Not Humans, Claims Alchemy CEO

The existing financial system was not created with machines in mind, but rather with human limitations such as geographical constraints, 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 Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. 'It can be argued that crypto was built for AI agents, not humans,' Viswanathan stated. The discrepancy is evident everywhere, with banks having operating hours due to human needs, payments tied to countries because people reside in them, and credit cards assuming physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate without sleep, physical location, or the need to visit banks or use cards, and are increasingly involved in transactions. 'All transactions for agents are online and inherently global,' Viswanathan explained in an interview. 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 based on the assumption of friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, and fees, which is normal for humans but impractical for AI agents. Agents require seamless, global transactions at any time, often in small increments, and need programmability, direct control over funds via code, and systems that do not rely on physical infrastructure or identity. Crypto offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. 'Crypto is the global infrastructure for money that agents need,' Viswanathan said. The complexity of crypto, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, which has long been a challenge for humans, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code, with zeros and ones being their native language, 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 shift 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 utilize 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, with a layered future consisting of traditional finance and crypto as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that.