Article source: Odaily Planet Daily.
Original | Odaily Planet Daily.
Author | Wenser
At the CES2025 event on January 7, Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia and a key figure in the AI industry, stated, 'AI Agents are expected to become the next robotics industry, with an industry scale of trillions of dollars.' Although the audience's reaction to this grand statement was lukewarm, the crypto industry has long been 'buying in'—tokens related to AI Agents such as VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms have become some of the few focal points in the recent market, and their price performance has been outstanding compared to the broader market; in contrast, many established AI conceptual projects such as FET, WLD, and ARKM have recently appeared somewhat lonely, with price performance significantly down from highs.
Odaily Planet Daily will conduct a comparative analysis of new and old AI conceptual tokens in this article to gain insight into market trends.
Current status of new and old AI conceptual coins: AI Agent tokens are hot, while AI conceptual coins are cooling off.
From a market perspective, AI Agent tokens represented by VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms are undoubtedly the most eye-catching projects at present, compared to AI conceptual coins like FET, WLD, and ARKM. The former not only combines the AI concept but also offers a more grand narrative perspective, lower participation barriers, and greater anticipated returns. The reasons, in my personal opinion, mainly include the following aspects:
The market inertia of favoring new over old: new cars attract people, old cars are too heavy.
As an industry that operates 24/7, the cryptocurrency market's enthusiasm for new hotspots and technologies is a commonality in the industry, which has led to the practice of 'favoring new tokens over old ones': for market retail investors and the crypto community, compared to the 'AI old coins' with more buyers, concentrated chip distribution, and large groups of trapped investors, new coins related to the AI Agent concept are undoubtedly more attractive—lower entry barriers, whether from the price of a single token or the overall market cap, AI Agent tokens offer more opportunities for entry.
Narrative is more attractive: AI Agents are far more appealing than merely 'piggybacking on the AI concept.'
From the narrative perspective that is most discussed in the cryptocurrency industry, events such as AI Agent issuing tokens, trading, and publishing social media content to interact with fans are undoubtedly more interesting, entertaining, and discussion-worthy than creating a serious project that rigidly follows the AI concept.
With the emergence of Truth Terminal (GOAT), the cryptocurrency industry has effectively opened a Pandora's box for AI Agents, liberating the power of AI in ways that many had not anticipated, endowing cryptocurrency with stronger technological attributes, future attributes, and more imaginative narratives—AI Agents in the crypto space can do more than just assist humans in producing content; they also have the potential to directly engage in human social and economic activities and currency transactions.
Project route differences: teams, technology, development directions vary widely.
In terms of project development routes, the current AI Agent and token projects differ significantly from traditional established AI conceptual coin projects.
From the team perspective, AI Agent and token projects are often initially driven by solo developers; on one hand, AI and AI Agents offer a lower-cost, lower-barrier development path for developers and even ordinary people; on the other hand, relatively independent developers can respond more quickly to market trends and adjust project directions based on market feedback, resulting in lower decision-making and optimization costs. To put it bluntly, this aligns more with the positioning of 'makeshift teams'; whereas traditional established AI conceptual projects often start with mature teams that have grand missions and visions, focusing on attracting high-value investments through grand narratives, with project development timelines measured in years, and often being more accountable to investors rather than originating from the community. For example, FET (Fetch.ai) is a typical case, having raised $5 million and $40 million in funding in March 2021 and March 2023 respectively, and being the second crowdfunding project launched through Binance IEO, which can be considered a product of top-tier resources.
From a technical perspective, previous AI conceptual coin projects tended to view technology more as a tool and packaging, emphasizing practical use cases and user scenarios, but the actual business implementation was often far from AI, creating a strong sense of distance with users. In contrast, current AI Agent and token projects are relatively simpler and more straightforward, with their technological origins stemming from the explosion of AI technology, having a lower understanding threshold and greater technological extensibility; users can personally engage in actual operations, and user education in technology is more direct and in-depth.
In terms of development direction, established AI conceptual coin projects emphasize building the future digital economy through AI, which sounds more like 'drawing a pie' and has limited relevance to the interests of the market and users; while AI Agent and token projects not only have specific visual images for users to interact with, but also allow for more direct token trading, meeting market demand through speculation and social media interaction.
In summary, AI Agent token projects, including VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms, are more like meme coins clad in AI clothing; whereas AI conceptual coins like FET, WLD, and ARKM are closer to the 'VC coin' concept, farther from the community, and their meme attributes are vastly different from the former. The level of discussion is also difficult to compare with the new trending hotspots of AI Agents, their associated tokens, and developers, leading to the natural distance from value discovery.
Current situation of established AI conceptual coins: projects are advancing steadily, token deflation, sell-offs, and unlocks vary.
Although market performance has been relatively flat, various established AI conceptual coin projects have still made varying degrees of progress recently; the following are specific information introductions:
FET: 5 million tokens will be burned on January 10.
The project behind FET, the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, announced on January 5 that it plans to burn 5 million FET tokens on January 10, creating deflationary pressure within its ecosystem. This milestone is also part of the ASI Train model in its roadmap.
Perhaps the popularity of the AI sector makes it difficult for FET to remain indifferent, needing to brainstorm for more market attention for token performance and project development.
WLD: Projects are advancing steadily, token transfers are still ongoing.
Worldcoin previously launched Worldchain and introduced the new World ID Passport Credential in November last year, which is currently being trialed in some countries such as Chile, Colombia, Malaysia, and South Korea. The World ID credential allows individuals to link valid forms of ID (starting from NFC-enabled passports) to their World ID without sharing any information with TFH, the World Foundation, or any other third parties. At the same time, the World Foundation is providing WLD tokens to individuals with valid World ID passport certificates.
Additionally, according to an email from Worldcoin to users, the number of participants in the Worldcoin community has reached 20 million. Regarding the tokens, in early December last year, according to monitoring by Pyth Network, Alameda marked addresses transferred about 5 million WLD (worth approximately 16 million USD) to addresses 0xd9C4 and 0xEF90.
ARKM: Platform function updates, derivatives exchange promotion ongoing.
As a project that once gained immense attention from numerous Chinese crypto KOLs for its 'previous indifference, now unattainable' stance, Arkham continues to cultivate its presence in the blockchain data analysis platform sector. On January 6, according to an official announcement, Arkham announced the addition of a Market Data page, allowing users to track important token data for spot, futures, and options products across multiple CEXs.
In November last year, Arkham officially announced the launch of the derivatives exchange ARKHAM PERPETUALS EXCHANGE, followed by the introduction of a trading point system (ARKHAM EXCHANGE POINTS) to encourage users to trade and earn points. Subsequently, the official account has taken actions to drive registrations under several tweets on the X platform, but the results so far seem minimal.
For the platform, attracting new users remains the top priority.
Overview of the market status: The historical drop for established AI tokens has reached 81%.
As of the time of writing, the market performance of representative 'established AI conceptual coins' is as follows——
FET is currently priced at $1.35, with a 24-hour decrease of 13.11%. The historical peak price was $3.48, with a historical drop of about 61.5%; the market cap is currently reported at $3.54 billion;
WLD is currently priced at $2.27, with a 24-hour decrease of 13.21%. The historical peak price was $11.96, with a historical drop of about 81%; the market cap is currently reported at $1.96 billion.
ARKM is currently priced at $1.4, with a 24-hour decrease of 15.98%. The historical peak price was $2.7, with a historical drop of about 48%; the market cap is currently reported at $468 million.
Meanwhile, the market value of AI Agent-related tokens has been rising steadily, currently stabilizing at key points. According to Coingecko data, among them:
VIRTUAL is currently priced at $3.59, with a market cap of approximately $3.59 billion;
ai16z is currently priced at $1.83, with a market cap of approximately $2 billion;
swarms is currently priced at $0.35, with a market cap of approximately $350 million;
To a certain extent, in terms of market performance and discussion, AI Agent-related token projects are already competing strongly.
Conclusion: Can old trees bear new flowers? It depends on how established projects respond.
At the end of the article, we can only make a phased judgment that established AI conceptual token projects are currently lagging behind the latest hotspots of AI Agent token projects; whether established projects can rejuvenate, find new growth points, and regain market attention will mainly depend on their follow-up and iteration on new technologies, new routes, and new hotspots.
If you stand by and do nothing, naturally everything will come to an end; if you strive to catch up, perhaps there will be different results and answers.
Token unlocking query website:
FET——https://tokenomist.ai/fetch-ai, the next major unlocking will begin on January 28, 2025, with an unlocking quantity of 3.34 million tokens;
WLD——https://tokenomist.ai/worldcoin-wld, the next major unlocking will begin on June 24, 2026.
