Crypto built for AI agents
Crypto built for AI agents is the headline claim of Nikil Viswanathan, CEO and co‑founder of Alchemy. Alchemy is a crypto infrastructure company that provides APIs, node infrastructure, and data services to power blockchain-based applications. Viswanathan will be speaking at Consensus Miami next month.
Viswanathan describes AI agents as operating differently from humans: they do not sleep and they do not live anywhere, and all their transactions occur online. These agents are inherently global and need to transact across borders at any time. The transactions they perform are often in tiny increments and require programmability and direct money control via code. Agents operate natively in code and read in zeros and ones.
Crypto offers a global, always-on financial layer where value moves as easily as data. Crypto is described as the global infrastructure for money that agents need. Seed phrases and private keys are difficult for humans but are powerful for machines.
Viswanathan will present this view at Consensus Miami. The claim frames crypto as an infrastructure aligned with the operational needs of AI agents.
Nikil Viswanathan, CEO and co‑founder of Alchemy, described AI agents as operating differently from humans. Viswanathan said they do not sleep, do not live anywhere physical, and have no offline presence. All their transactions occur online and are inherently global. These characteristics distinguish agent operation from human activity.
Viswanathan noted that AI agents need to transact across borders at any time, often in very small amounts. Their transactions frequently occur in tiny increments and require programmability and direct money control enabled by code. He also stated, “All transactions for agents are online.” He added, “They’re inherently global.”
Viswanathan emphasized that agents operate natively in code and read in zeros and ones; he described that as their native language and also the language of crypto. Seed phrases and private keys are difficult for humans but are powerful for machines. Crypto offers a global, always-on financial layer where value moves as easily as data. Crypto is described as the global infrastructure for money that agents need.
Nikil Viswanathan framed crypto as a natural financial layer for machine-native actors, stating, “You can argue that crypto was built for AI agents, not humans.” He described crypto as enabling a global, always-on system in which value moves with the same fluidity as data. The account characterizes crypto as the global infrastructure for money that agents need, emphasizing its continuous availability and borderless reach. This framing links the technical properties of distributed ledgers with operational requirements for machine-to-machine economic activity.
The argument highlights programmability and direct money control through code as central advantages for agents that transact autonomously. AI agents need to transact across borders at any time and often in very small amounts, and programmability allows those transfers to be executed automatically and precisely. Seed phrases and private keys were presented as mechanisms that are hard for humans to manage but can be leveraged effectively by machines, enabling secure, machine-controlled custody and authentication. The portrayal emphasizes that crypto primitives can support high-frequency, tiny-value flows without reliance on traditional banking rails.
Together, these points are offered as reasons crypto aligns with the operational profile of AI agents. The account presents crypto’s continuous, programmable, and machine-friendly features as core to that alignment.
Alchemy CEO Nikil Viswanathan frames crypto as closely aligned with the needs of AI agents, emphasizing the infrastructure and transaction capabilities that support machine-native economic activity. He highlights crypto’s continuous, borderless and programmable financial properties, along with machine-friendly primitives such as seed phrases and private keys, as fitting the operational profile of AI agents and positioning crypto as a suitable global financial layer for them.
