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

The current financial system was not designed with machines in mind, instead it was built around the constraints of human life such as geographical location, sleep patterns, paperwork, and physical presence. However, as AI agents start to participate in the economy, this human-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Nikil Viswanathan, the co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. "You can argue that crypto was built for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan said. The discrepancy is evident everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human limitations, payments are tied to countries because humans live in them, and credit cards require a physical identity and presence. On the other hand, AI agents operate differently as they do not sleep, do not have a physical location, and do not use banks or credit cards. Moreover, they are increasingly involved in transactions, not just assisting with tasks. All transactions for agents are online and inherently global, Viswanathan told CoinDesk in an interview. This is where crypto starts to look 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 the underlying tools and services that developers need to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services. Traditional finance is built on the assumption of friction, where paying someone in another country involves currency exchange, intermediaries, delays, and fees, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. Agents require seamless transactions across borders, at any time, often in small increments, and need programmability, direct control over money via code, and systems that do not depend on physical infrastructure or identity. Crypto offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value moves as easily as data. The complexity that has long made crypto difficult for humans, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines, as agents operate natively in code. For years, crypto has tried to become more human-friendly, but its underlying architecture was never really built 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. Moving forward, AI agents will sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing flows of capital in real time, allowing people to control their funds more easily. The result would be a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more 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.