Crypto Designed for AI Agents, Not Humans, According to Alchemy CEO

The current financial system was not designed with machines in mind, but rather around the limitations of human life, including 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, co-founder of the cryptocurrency firm Alchemy. 'One could argue that cryptocurrency was built for AI agents, not humans,' Viswanathan said. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human constraints, payments are tied to countries because people reside in them, and credit cards require physical identity and presence. AI agents, on the other hand, operate differently. They do not sleep, have no physical location, do not visit banks, and do not carry cards. Moreover, they are increasingly involved in transactions, not just assisting with tasks. All transactions for agents take place online and are inherently global, Viswanathan explained in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where cryptocurrency starts to look less like an alternative financial system and more like the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor. 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, where cross-border payments involve currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. For humans, this is normal, but for AI agents, it is impractical. Agents require seamless transactions across borders, often in small increments, and need programmability, direct control over money via code, and systems that do not rely 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, including 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 read in 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. Viswanathan compared the shift from cryptocurrency tools being built primarily for humans to 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, 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.