Crypto Designed for AI Agents, Not Humans, Claims Alchemy CEO

The current financial system was not designed with machines in mind, but rather 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-centric design is becoming a hindrance, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. Viswanathan argues that cryptocurrency was actually built for AI agents, not humans. The traditional financial system has limitations such as operating hours, country-specific payments, and credit cards that require physical identity and presence. In contrast, AI agents do not sleep, have no physical location, and do not use traditional banking systems or credit cards. They conduct transactions online and are inherently global. Viswanathan believes that cryptocurrency is the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor, one that operates seamlessly across borders and at any time. Traditional finance is built on the assumption of friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, and fees. However, for AI agents, this friction is unusable. They require programmability, direct control over money via code, and systems that do not depend on physical infrastructure or identity. Cryptocurrency offers exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value moves as easily as data. The complexity of cryptocurrency, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is actually a strength when it comes to machines. AI agents operate natively in code and can read in zeros and ones, making them a natural fit for cryptocurrency. Viswanathan compares the shift from crypto tools being built for humans to crypto tools being used by AI agents to the shift 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 more powerful because it is designed for machines. In the future, AI agents will sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically and managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing flows of capital in real time. This will result in a financial system that is more global, more programmable, and more autonomous. Viswanathan envisions a layered future with traditional finance and crypto as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that. In this future, agents will operate finance, just like computers operate the internet and humans use it.