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

The existing financial system was not created to accommodate machines. It was developed with human limitations in mind, such as geographical constraints, sleep patterns, paperwork, and physical presence. However, as AI agents begin to participate in economic activities, this human-centric design is becoming increasingly restrictive, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the cryptocurrency firm Alchemy. 'One could argue that cryptocurrency was created for AI agents, not humans,' Viswanathan said. The disparity is evident everywhere. Banks have limited operating hours because humans do, payments are tied to specific countries because people reside in them, and credit cards require physical identification and presence. In contrast, AI agents operate differently. They do not require sleep, have no physical presence, and do not use banks or credit cards. Moreover, they are increasingly involved in transactions, not just assisting with tasks. 'All transactions involving agents occur online and are 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 is a cryptocurrency infrastructure company that provides developers with the necessary tools and services to build blockchain-based applications. It offers APIs, node infrastructure, and data services that support a wide range of applications, from financial apps to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and games, enabling companies to build and scale on-chain products without managing the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Traditional finance is built on the assumption of friction. For humans, paying someone in another country involves currency exchange, intermediaries, delays, and fees, which is normal. However, for AI agents, this is impractical. Agents require seamless transactions across borders, often in small increments, and need programmability, direct control over money 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 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, which has long made it challenging for humans, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code. 'Agents read in zeros and ones, which is their native language,' he said. 'That's also the language of cryptocurrency.' For years, cryptocurrency has attempted to become more human-friendly, but its underlying architecture was never 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, 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 operate 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.