The AI token sector lost $5 billion in market cap, with most tokens trading in the red.
TL;DR…
- Bitcoin's Big Week: BTC hit a new all-time high of $107,658, stabilizing around $104,100, boosting its market cap by $80 billion and solidifying a 4% weekly gain.
- Altcoins on the Decline: With BTC's rise to a 56.7% market dominance, altcoin markets saw significant losses.
- AI Tokens Struggle: The AI token sector lost $5 billion in market cap, with most tokens trading in the red; a few, like Virtuals Protocol and PARSIQ, bucked the trend with sharp gains.
- Emerging AI Agent Sector: AI Agent tokens, including Casper AI and AI Agent Layer, showed remarkable growth, with Virtuals Protocol leading after a spike to become a top 50 crypto by ranking.
Bitcoin (BTC) hit a new all-time high (ATH) but altcoins aren’t looking so hot.
Here, we take a look at the ramifications for the AI token sector as a whole. Let’s dive in!
Did you miss last week’s AI update? Check it out here.
Market Overview
This week was a big one for Bitcoin. The OG cryptocurrency smashed through its previous all-time high to reach a new peak value of $107,658 earlier this week. Since then, the coin has retraced to the $104,100 range—still holding up above its previous ATH.
Source: Bitcoin (BTC) Coin Page
It’s now up 4% in a week, adding $80 billion to its market cap in the process.
During this time, BTC has recaptured some market dominance. It now sits at 56.7%, up from 55.5% a week ago, precipitating a significant decline in many altcoin markets.
This is despite news that Microsoft investors rejected a proposal to add BTC to its treasury. Indeed, just 0.55% of shareholders voted in favor of the proposal.
Nonetheless, with the Fed expected to cut interest rates by 0.25% this week, things are looking up for risk assets like BTC and altcoins.
AI Market Recap
Despite the bullish week for Bitcoin (BTC), the same can't be said for the AI token sector as a whole.
Source: AI & Big Data Tokens Page
Overall, the sector has shed almost $5 billion from its market capitalization in the last week, despite relatively high trading volume.
Eight of the top 10 largest AI tokens are in the red during this period. Indeed, approximately 80% of all AI tokens have also been trading in the red over the last seven days.
That said, a handful have managed to buck the trend strongly. This week's best-performing AI tokens include:
- Virtuals Protocol (Virtuals): gained 72.9%
- PARSIQ (PRQ): gained 53.9%
- NetMind Token (NMT): gained 25.3%
For comparison, this week’s worst performers include:
- Cortex (CTXC): lost 52.7%
- Vana (VANA): lost 26.8%
- Destra Network (DSYNC): lost 20.7%
Though the broader AI token sector is experiencing a downturn, a subsector is putting on an impressive display—tokens that fall under the AI Agent meta.
Dozens of new projects under the AI agent umbrella proliferated in the last month, some of which have recorded solid growth over the last week.
These include:
- Casper AI (AIAGENT): gained 360%
- Freysa (FAI): gained 213%
- AI Agent Layer (AIFUN): gained 46.5%
All AI Agent projects have one thing in common: they involve on-chain AI agents that can carry out a variety of tasks, such as Casper AI's AI-agent deployer or Virtuals Protocol’s autonomous agent engine.
Notably, Virtuals Protocol appears to be the clear leader of the AI agent sector after briefly entering the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization after hitting an all-time high of $2.95 yesterday.
>> Interested in AI Agent tokens? Click here to see the full list.
The AI-created meme coin known as Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) was also completely oblivious to the negative sentiment this week.
Source: Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) Token Page
The token gained a whopping 90.7% this week and briefly touched an all-time high of over $0.94 (as of writing), achieving a market capitalization (mcap) of $940 million.
On the other hand, Bittensor (TAO) is on the verge of losing its position as the fourth-largest AI token after posting an 11.6% loss this week. Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET) is now hot on its heels with under $30 million separating the market cap of the two tokens.
Overall, the AI token sector is performing worse than most other sectors in terms of seven-day mcap-weighted returns. The sector has a mcap-weighted return of -5.7% during this time, placing it 13th out of the 22 sectors tracked by DefiLlama. Meanwhile, PolitiFi takes the No. 1 spot, with a mcap-weighted return of 46.3% over the last week.
>> Keep tabs on your favorite Big Data and AI Tokens here.
AI News Roundup
The last week was jam-packed with AI developments and news. We’ve included some of the most significant stories below to help you catch up.
Ai16z Developer Partners With Stanford University: Eliza Labs, the AI developer behind ai16z, has partnered with Stanford University's Future of Digital Currency Initiative. The collaboration aims to explore how AI agents can enhance Web3 technologies, focusing on applications in digital currency.
Hacker Promotes Scam on Anthropic’s X.com Account: Anthropic's X social media account was hacked to promote the Venti AI agent, alongside a fake token, Claude, in a scam that netted hackers around $100K. This incident highlights a growing trend where hackers exploit high-profile accounts to shill new tokens or honeypot scams.
Google Launches its Latest AI Model, Gemini 2.0: Google DeepMind has introduced Gemini 2.0, an advanced AI model designed for agentic interactions, capable of multimodal outputs including images and audio. The model is available to developers and will integrate into Google products like Search to enhance user experience with sophisticated reasoning capabilities.
Hyperbolic Labs Raises $12 Million in Series A Round: Hyperbolic, an open-access AI cloud provider, has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Polychain and Variant, with participation from Wintermute, GSR and others.
>> That’s a wrap for this week’s AI roundup. Join us next week for more AI sector news, updates, and developments.
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