CEO of Alchemy: Cryptocurrency Was Designed for AI, Not Humans

The conventional financial system was never intended to accommodate machines. 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 bottleneck, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. Viswanathan argues that cryptocurrency was essentially built for AI agents, not humans. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human constraints, payments are tied to countries because humans reside in them, and credit cards require physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate without interruption, are not bound by geographical locations, and do not require physical cards or bank visits. Moreover, they are increasingly capable of executing transactions independently. All transactions conducted by agents occur 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 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 having to manage the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Traditional finance is based on the assumption of friction, where cross-border payments involve currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees - a normal experience for humans but unusable for AI agents. Agents require seamless, borderless transactions at any time, often in small increments, and need programmability, direct control over funds via code, and systems that do not rely on physical infrastructure or identity. Cryptocurrency provides exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can move 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 can 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 intended for humans. Viswanathan compared the shift from crypto tools being built primarily for humans to crypto tools 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, 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. The result will be a financial system that is more global, programmable, and 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.