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

The current financial system was not designed with machines in mind, instead being built around human limitations such as geographical location, sleep patterns, 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. Viswanathan argues that cryptocurrency was actually built for AI agents, not humans. The traditional financial system is filled with limitations, such as banking hours and geographical constraints, that do not apply to AI agents. These agents do not require sleep, physical presence, or traditional identification methods, and they are increasingly capable of conducting transactions on their own. As a result, cryptocurrency is starting to look like the native infrastructure for this new type of economic actor. Alchemy, a crypto infrastructure company, provides the necessary tools and services for developers to build blockchain-based applications, enabling companies to create and scale on-chain products without having to manage the complexity of blockchain systems themselves. Traditional finance is based on friction, with cross-border payments involving currency exchanges, intermediaries, and fees, which is normal for humans but unusable for AI agents. In contrast, cryptocurrency offers a global, always-on financial layer where value can be transferred as easily as data. The complexity of cryptocurrency, including seed phrases and private keys, is actually a strength when it comes to AI agents, which operate natively in code. Viswanathan believes that the shift from crypto tools being built for humans to being used by AI agents is similar to the shift from the postal system to the internet. In the future, AI agents will sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically and managing wallets, transactions, and capital flows in real time, making it easier for people to control their own funds. This will result in a financial system that is more global, programmable, and autonomous, with a layered structure consisting of traditional finance and crypto as the base, an agent layer operating on top, and a human interface above that.