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

The modern financial landscape 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 the economy, this human-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. "One could argue that cryptocurrency was built for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan stated. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human operation, payments are tied to countries because people reside in them, and credit cards assume physical identity and presence. AI agents, on the other hand, operate differently. They do not sleep, have no fixed 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 are online and inherently global, Viswanathan explained in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where cryptocurrency begins to resemble the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor, rather than an alternative financial system. 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. These services enable companies to create and scale on-chain products without managing the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Traditional finance is based on the assumption of friction, where paying someone in another country involves currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. For humans, this is normal, but for AI agents, it is impractical. Agents require seamless transactions across borders, at any time, often in small increments. They 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, reading in zeros and ones, which is also the language of cryptocurrency. For years, cryptocurrency has attempted to simplify itself into something more human-friendly, but its underlying architecture was never truly designed for humans. Viswanathan compared the shift from crypto tools being built primarily for humans to crypto tools being used by AI agents to the earlier shift from the postal system to the internet. While people once had to physically write out 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 is designed for computers," Viswanathan said. "Cryptocurrency is similar." Moving forward, AI agents will utilize crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, allowing people to control their funds more easily. "You can write code to manage a cryptocurrency wallet," Viswanathan said. "You cannot write code to manage a bank account in the same way." The result will be a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more autonomous. Viswanathan envisions a layered future: traditional finance and cryptocurrency as 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.