Alchemy CEO: Crypto Was Designed for AI Agents, Not Humans

The current financial system was not built with machines in mind, but rather around human constraints such as geographical location, sleep patterns, and physical presence. However, as AI agents become more involved in economic activities, this human-centric design is becoming a bottleneck, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of crypto firm Alchemy. "You can argue that crypto was built for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan said. The traditional financial system is limited by its human-focused design, with banks having operating hours, payments tied to countries, and credit cards requiring physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents do not sleep, have no physical location, and do not use traditional banking systems or credit cards. They operate online, are inherently global, and are increasingly involved in transactions. Viswanathan believes that crypto is the native infrastructure for these AI agents, offering a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. Traditional finance is built on friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, and fees. However, AI agents require seamless, programmable, and direct control over money via code, without relying on physical infrastructure or identity. Crypto provides exactly that, making it the ideal system for AI agents. The complexity of crypto, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting with code, is actually a strength when it comes to machines, as they operate natively in code. Viswanathan compared the shift from crypto being used primarily by humans to being used by AI agents to the transition 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 more suitable for AI agents. In the future, AI agents will sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity, managing wallets, and optimizing capital flows in real time, allowing people to control their funds more easily. This will result in a more global, programmable, and autonomous financial system, with a layered structure consisting of traditional finance and crypto as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that.