Student Coin interview questions

I did not pass the first out of two stages of technical interviews. Interview with CTO (Hugo), very pleasant, friendly atmosphere. There were two algorithms to solve, which were pretty straightforward, but it was clear that it's an interview stage for people that prepare for this kind of thing. When I challenged Hugo about the reasoning behind it, he said that they are looking for people that are good at abstract thinking, to which I responded this is not a suitable method because all it does is filter out people that do not prepare for algorithm interviews, doesn't matter how good they are. He then said they also have the 2nd part of the technical interview, which made me realize there is no logic behind it, because why not start from the 2nd part or replace algorithms with a task or actual problem to solve? This company is one of those typical companies that don't spend enough time on developing a good interview process, which is a shame, because I really wanted to join them and was excited about their products.