Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily
At the CES 2025 American Consumer Electronics Show on January 7, Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia and a leading figure in the AI industry, stated: 'AI Agents are expected to become the next robot industry, with an industry scale of up to trillions of dollars.' Although the audience's reaction to this bold statement was lukewarm, the crypto industry has already bought into AI Agents—tokens related to AI Agents like VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms have become some of the few focal points in the market recently, and their price trends have performed well compared to the overall market; in contrast, many established AI concept-related projects like FET, WLD, and ARKM have appeared somewhat desolate recently, with their price performance significantly down from their peaks.
Odaily Planet Daily will conduct a comparative analysis of new and old AI concept tokens in this article, offering a glimpse into market trends.
Current situation of old and new AI concept coins: AI Agent tokens are in high demand, while AI concept coins are losing popularity.
From an intuitive perspective on the market, AI Agent tokens represented by VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms are undoubtedly the most eye-catching projects at present. Compared to AI concept coins like FET, WLD, and ARKM, the former not only integrates the AI concept but also boasts a grander narrative perspective, lower participation thresholds, and greater expected returns. Upon closer examination, I believe the reasons primarily include the following aspects:
Market inertia of favoring new over old: new cars attract more people, while old cars are too heavy.
As an industry that operates 24/7, the cryptocurrency market's pursuit of new trends and technologies can be said to be a shared characteristic of the industry, leading to the convention of 'favoring new tokens over old ones': for market retail investors and crypto communities, compared to the 'AI old coins' with many buyers, concentrated token distribution, and large groups of trapped investors, new coins related to AI Agents are undoubtedly more attractive—lower entry barriers, both in terms of the price of a single token and the overall market cap, offer more opportunities for involvement with AI Agent tokens.
Narratives are more appealing: AI Agents are far more attractive than merely 'riding the AI concept'.
From the narrative perspective that is most discussed in the cryptocurrency industry, events such as issuing AI Agent tokens, trading tokens, and interacting with fans through social media content are undoubtedly more interesting, fun, and discussion-worthy than trying to create a serious project that simply rides the AI concept.
After the emergence of Truth Terminal (GOAT), the cryptocurrency industry has effectively opened a Pandora's box of AI Agents, liberating the power of AI in ways that many previously did not anticipate, endowing cryptocurrency with a stronger technological attribute, futuristic qualities, and a more imaginative narrative—AI Agents in the crypto field can do more than just assist humans in content production; they now have the potential to directly participate in human socio-economic activities and monetary transactions.
Project route differences: Teams, technologies, and development directions vary significantly.
In terms of project development routes, current AI Agents and token projects possess certain differences compared to traditional established AI concept coins.
From a team perspective, AI Agents and token projects often start with solo developers. On one hand, AI and AI Agents provide a low-cost, low-barrier development path for developers and even ordinary people; on the other hand, relatively independent developers can respond quickly to market trends and adjust project directions based on market feedback, with lower decision-making and optimization costs—simply put, they align more with the 'grassroots' positioning. In contrast, established AI concept projects often begin with mature teams that have grand mission visions, seeking to attract high investments through grand narratives, with project development measured in years and being more accountable to investors than the community. 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 on Binance IEO, representing top-tier resources.
From a technological perspective, previous AI concept coin-related projects viewed technology more as a tool and packaging, emphasizing practical use cases and user scenarios, but the actual business application was far from AI and had a strong sense of distance from users; whereas current AI Agent and token projects are relatively more straightforward, with their technological origins stemming from the technological explosion of AI, presenting a lower understanding barrier and stronger technological extensibility, allowing users to engage in hands-on operations, with user education around technology being more direct and in-depth.
In terms of development direction, established AI concept coin projects emphasize constructing the future digital economy through AI, sounding more like 'making promises', with limited relevance to market and user interests; whereas AI Agents and token projects not only provide specific visual representations for users to interact with but also facilitate more direct token trading, satisfying market demands for speculation and social media interaction.
In summary, AI Agent token projects, including VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms, resemble meme coins disguised in AI clothing; while AI concept coins, including FET, WLD, and ARKM, are closer to the concept of 'VC coins', further removed from the community, with meme attributes being vastly different from the former, making it difficult to compare their discussion levels with the newly trending AI Agents and their corresponding tokens and developers, naturally distancing from value discovery.
Overview of the current situation of established AI concept coins: The project is progressing steadily, with varying degrees of token deflation, dumping, and unlocking.
Despite relatively flat market performance, various established AI concept coin-related projects have made different degrees of progress recently, with the following specific information:
FET: 5 million tokens will be burned on January 10.
The project behind FET, Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, announced on January 5 that it plans to burn 5 million FET tokens on January 10, creating deflationary pressure in its ecosystem. This milestone is also part of its roadmap for the ASI Train model.
Perhaps the popularity of the AI sector makes it difficult for FET to sit idly by, needing to brainstorm to garner more market attention for token performance and project development.
WLD: The project is progressing steadily, and token transfers are still ongoing.
Worldcoin previously launched Worldchain and introduced a new World ID Passport Credential last November, 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 with NFC-enabled passports) to their World ID without sharing any information with TFH, the World Foundation, or any other third parties. Meanwhile, the World Foundation provides WLD tokens to individuals holding a valid World ID passport certificate.
Additionally, according to an email message released by Worldcoin to users, the number of participants in the Worldcoin community has reached 20 million. As for the tokens, in early December last year, according to monitoring by Pioneer's Shield, Alameda's marked address had transferred about 5 million WLD tokens (worth approximately $16 million) to addresses 0xd9C4 and 0xEF90.
ARKM: Platform function updates and derivatives exchange promotion ongoing.
Arkham, which once gained immense attention in the Chinese crypto community for being 'previously ignored, now unattainable', continues to work in the blockchain data analysis platform field. On January 6, the official announcement stated that Arkham has added a Market Data page, supporting users in tracking 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 the exchange points (ARKHAM EXCHANGE POINTS) system to encourage users to trade for points. Subsequently, the official account has made several attempts to drive registrations through various posts on the X platform, but results have been minimal so far.
For the platform, acquiring new users remains the top priority.
Market status overview: Established AI tokens have historically dropped as much as 81%.
As of the time of writing, the market performance of some representative 'established AI concept coins' is as follows—
FET is currently reported at $1.35, with a 24-hour decline of 13.11%, a historical peak price of $3.48, and a historical drop of approximately 61.5%; market cap is currently reported at $3.54 billion.
WLD is currently reported at $2.27, with a 24-hour decline of 13.21%, a historical peak price of $11.96, and a historical drop of approximately 81%; market cap is currently reported at $1.96 billion.
ARKM is currently reported at $1.40, with a 24-hour decline of 15.98%, a historical peak price of $2.70, and a historical drop of approximately 48%; market cap is currently reported at $468 million.
Meanwhile, the market cap of AI Agent-related tokens has risen steadily and is currently stabilizing at key nodes. According to Coingecko data, among them:
VIRTUAL is currently reported at $3.59, with a market cap of $3.59 billion.
ai16z is currently reported at $1.83, with a market cap of around $2 billion.
Swarms price is temporarily reported at $0.35, with a market cap of around $350 million.
To some extent, in terms of market performance and discussion levels, AI Agent-related token projects are already quite remarkable.
Conclusion: Can old trees bloom again? It depends on the responses of established projects.
In conclusion, we can only tentatively judge that established AI concept token projects are currently lagging behind the latest trending AI Agent token projects; whether these older projects can rejuvenate, find new growth points, and regain market attention depends largely on their follow-up and iteration on new technologies, new routes, and new trends.
If one sits idle, naturally everything will come to an end; if one strives to catch up, perhaps there will be different results and answers.
