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

The conventional financial system was not created with machines in mind. Instead, it was built around human limitations such as geographical constraints, sleep patterns, paperwork, 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. Viswanathan argues that cryptocurrency was essentially built for AI agents, not humans. The discrepancies are evident everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human limitations, payments are tied to countries because humans reside in them, and credit cards assume physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate differently - they do not sleep, have no physical presence, and do not use traditional banking systems or credit cards. Moreover, they are increasingly involved in transactions, not just assisting with tasks. All transactions conducted by agents are online and inherently global, Viswanathan noted in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where cryptocurrency starts to appear less like an alternative financial system and more like the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor. 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, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. Agents require seamless transactions across borders, often in tiny increments, and need programmability, direct control over money via code, and systems that do not depend on physical infrastructure or identity. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that - a global, always-on financial layer where value moves as easily as data. The complexity that 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 their native language is 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 really built for humans. Viswanathan compared the shift from cryptocurrency tools being built primarily for humans to cryptocurrency tools being used by AI agents to the earlier 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 similar. Moving forward, AI agents will sit 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. The result will be a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more autonomous, with a layered structure consisting of traditional finance and cryptocurrency as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that.