Alchemy CEO Claims Crypto is Better Suited for AI Agents Than Humans

The existing financial system was not designed with machines in mind, but rather around human constraints such as geographical location, sleep patterns, and physical presence. However, as AI agents start to participate in the economy, this human-centered design is becoming a hindrance, according to Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of the crypto firm Alchemy. "One could argue that crypto was built for AI agents, not humans," Viswanathan said. The disparity is evident everywhere: banks have limited hours due to human limitations, payments are tied to countries because people live in them, and credit cards require physical identification and presence. AI agents, on the other hand, operate differently - they do not sleep, have no physical location, and do not use banks or credit cards. Moreover, they are increasingly capable of conducting transactions on their own. All transactions for AI agents are online and inherently global, Viswanathan explained in an interview with CoinDesk. This is where crypto begins to resemble the native infrastructure for a new type of economic actor, rather than an alternative financial system. Alchemy, a crypto infrastructure company, provides developers with the necessary tools and services to build blockchain-based applications, including APIs, node infrastructure, and data services that support everything from financial apps to non-fungible tokens and games. Traditional finance is based on the assumption of friction, where cross-border payments involve currency exchanges, intermediaries, delays, and fees - a normal experience for humans but unusable for AI agents. AI agents require seamless, borderless transactions at any time, often in small increments, as well as programmability and direct control over money via code, without relying on physical infrastructure or identity. Crypto provides exactly that: a global, always-on financial layer where value can move as easily as data, Viswanathan said. "Crypto is the global infrastructure for money that AI agents need," he added. The complexity that has long made crypto difficult for humans, including seed phrases, private keys, and interacting directly with code, is exactly what makes it powerful for machines. Unlike humans, AI agents operate natively in code, reading in zeros and ones, which is also the language of crypto. For years, crypto has attempted to abstract itself into something more human-friendly, but its underlying architecture was never really built for humans. Viswanathan compared the shift from crypto tools being built primarily 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, crypto is similar. Moving forward, AI agents will sit on top of crypto infrastructure, handling complexity automatically, managing wallets, executing transactions, and optimizing capital flows in real-time, making it easier for people to control their funds. "You can write code to manage a crypto wallet, but you can't write code to manage a bank account in the same way," Viswanathan said. The result would be 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. "Just like computers operate the internet and humans use it, AI agents will operate finance," he said.