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

The modern financial system was not created with machines in mind. 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 Alchemy co-founder Nikil Viswanathan. 'You can argue that cryptocurrency was built for AI agents, not humans,' Viswanathan said. The disparity is evident everywhere. Banks have limited hours because humans do, payments are tied to countries because people live 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. Increasingly, they are not just assisting with tasks but also conducting transactions. 'All transactions for agents are online and inherently global,' Viswanathan told CoinDesk in an interview. 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 friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees. For humans, this is normal, but for AI agents, it is unusable. Agents require seamless transactions across borders, often in small increments, and need programmability and direct control over money via code. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. 'Cryptocurrency is the global infrastructure for money that agents need,' Viswanathan said. The complexity of cryptocurrency, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is 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 said. 'That's also the language of cryptocurrency.' For years, cryptocurrency has tried to become more human-friendly, but its underlying architecture was never built for humans. Viswanathan compared the shift from cryptocurrency tools being built primarily for humans to cryptocurrency tools being used by AI agents to the shift 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, communication in the modern era is much faster. 'Email is far more powerful than the postal system because it's designed for computers,' Viswanathan said. '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. '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 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.