Alchemy CEO: Cryptocurrency was Designed for AI Agents, Not Humans

The current financial system was not built with machines in mind. It was designed around human limitations such as geographical location, sleep patterns, paperwork, and physical presence. However, as AI agents start to participate in the economy, this human-centered design is becoming a hindrance, according to Alchemy co-founder Nikil Viswanathan. "One could argue that cryptocurrency was created 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. Moreover, they are increasingly capable of conducting transactions on their own. "All transactions for agents are online and inherently global," Viswanathan told CoinDesk in an interview. This is where cryptocurrency starts to look like 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 power a wide range of products, from financial apps to non-fungible tokens and games, allowing companies to build and scale on-chain products without having to manage the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Traditional finance is based on friction. For humans, paying someone in another country involves currency exchange, intermediaries, delays, and fees. However, for AI agents, this is not feasible. Agents need to transact seamlessly across borders, at any time, often in small increments. They require 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, Viswanathan said. "Cryptocurrency is the global infrastructure for money that agents need," he added. What 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, Viswanathan said. Unlike humans, agents operate natively in code. "Agents read in zeros and ones, which is their native language," he said. "This is also the language of cryptocurrency." For years, cryptocurrency has tried to make itself more human-friendly. However, its underlying architecture was never really 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 is designed for computers," Viswanathan said. "Cryptocurrency is similar." Viswanathan said that in the future, 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 cannot write code to manage a bank account in the same way." The result would 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.