According to Alchemy's CEO, Cryptocurrency was Designed for AI, Not Humans

The current financial system was not designed with machines in mind, but rather around human limitations 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 bottleneck, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the cryptocurrency firm Alchemy. "You could argue that cryptocurrency was built for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan said. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks have operating hours because humans do, payments are tied to countries because people live in them, and credit cards require physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents do not sleep, do not have a physical location, do not visit banks, and do not use credit cards. Moreover, they are increasingly capable of performing transactions on their own. All transactions involving agents take place online and are inherently global, Viswanathan explained in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where cryptocurrency starts to resemble the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor, rather than an alternative financial system. Alchemy, a cryptocurrency infrastructure company, provides developers with the underlying tools and services needed to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services that power a wide range of products, from financial applications to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and games. Traditional finance is based on the assumption of friction, where cross-border payments involve currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. While this may be normal for humans, it is impractical for AI agents, which need to transact seamlessly across borders at any time, often in small increments, and require 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 can flow as easily as data. "Cryptocurrency is the global infrastructure for money that agents need," Viswanathan said. What has long made cryptocurrency challenging for humans, including the use of seed phrases, private keys, and direct interaction with code, is precisely what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code. "Agents read in zeros and ones, which is their native language," Viswanathan explained. "That's also the language of cryptocurrency." For years, cryptocurrency has attempted to make itself more user-friendly for humans, but its underlying architecture was never truly designed for humans in the first place. Viswanathan compared the shift from cryptocurrency tools being built primarily for humans to cryptocurrency tools being used by AI agents to the transition from the postal system to the internet. While people once had to physically write a letter, buy a stamp, and mail it to share messages globally, modern communication is much faster. "Email is far more powerful than the postal system because it's designed for computers," Viswanathan said. "Cryptocurrency is similar." Looking ahead, Viswanathan believes that AI agents will operate on top of cryptocurrency infrastructure, automatically handling complexity, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, making it easier for people to control their funds. "You can write code to manage a cryptocurrency wallet," Viswanathan said. "You can't write code to manage a bank account in the same way." The result would be a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more autonomous. Viswanathan envisions a layered future, with traditional finance and cryptocurrency at the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that. "Just like computers operate the internet and humans use it, agents will operate finance," he said.