After a strong start to the week, the cryptocurrency market experienced a sudden broad sell-off yesterday, which wiped out the gains most altcoins experienced at the start of the year.
TL;DR…
- Market Rollercoaster: The crypto market faced a major sell-off; AI tokens stand out with notable resilience.
- BTC’s Wild Ride: The OG cryptocurrency plummeted from $102K to under $95K but remains slightly up this week.
- AI Tokens Thrive: Casper AI (AIAGENT) outperformed with a 204.6% increase; others like RENDER and INJ posted solid gains. The AI Agent narrative continued to prosper.
- Innovation on the Rise: NVIDIA launches a $3,000 desktop AI supercomputer, signaling big moves in AI accessibility.
Well… that came out of nowhere.
After a strong start to the week, the cryptocurrency market experienced a sudden broad sell-off yesterday, which wiped out the gains most altcoins experienced at the start of the year.
With no clear cause, it remains uncertain whether the market will stabilize and recover, or continue tumbling to new 2025 lows.
Nonetheless, AI tokens have held strong in an otherwise choppy market.
Let’s see what’s what, shall we?
Market Overview
After reaching a peak of over $102,000 just yesterday, Bitcoin (BTC) has now collapsed back to under $95,000. That said, it’s still up 1% for the week.
Source: Bitcoin (BTC) Coin Page
Its market dominance has been slowly climbing over the last six months and now stands at 56.6%—just inches away from its one-year high of 60.1% seen back in November 2024.
The CMC Crypto Fear and Greed Index has remained largely neutral for the last two weeks, with the index now sitting at 54. Meanwhile, the Altcoin Season Index has fallen to 46/100, with BTC outperforming most altcoins over the same two-week period.
While BTC and most altcoins have struggled to remain positive over the last week, the majority of AI tokens remained well in the green over this timeframe.
Let’s take a closer look.
AI Market Recap
Despite the recent Bitcoin (BTC) sell-off, most AI tokens are still strongly in the green over the last week. Indeed, just two of the top 10 AI tokens by market capitalization are in the red over this period.
These are:
- Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL): down 9%
- Theta Network (THETA): down 1.6%
A handful of other top 10 AI tokens have retained an impressive performance over the last seven days, including:
- Render (RENDER): gained 12.5%
- Injective (INJ): gained 12.3%
- Internet Computer (ICP): gained 9.3%
Scrolling further down the list, we find several smaller AI tokens have put on an even more impressive display.
Source: Casper AI (AIAGENT) Token Page
Casper AI (AIAGENT) is currently this week's best-performing AI token. The token hit an all-time high of $0.02 yesterday after a meteoric rally fueled by recent CEX listings and an LP farming initiative on Thena.
The token has gained 204.6% in the last seven days and is sitting at a market cap of around $5.7 million.
Other outperformers include:
- PaLM AI (PALM): gained 61.4%
- NetMind Token (NMT): gained 58.2%
- Oraichain (ORAI): gained 46.1%
The AI Agent meta continued to gather momentum in the last week, with dozens of agent-based tokens recording impressive returns in this period, while some older projects gave back most of their recent growth.
Swarms (SWARMS) currently stands out among newer AI Agent projects, gaining 102.7% in a week on significant trading volume to reach a $320 million market cap.
Source: Big Data & AI Tokens Page
The AI category is still up 5.5% over the last week, with trading volume more than doubling over the same period, indicating growing demand in the sector.
Its market capitalization (mcap) now stands at $52.5 billion, down from a peak of $69.9 billion achieved in December 2024.
Overall, the AI sector remains one of the best-performing sectors by mcap-weighted returns. Per DefiLlama's narrative tracker, the sector achieved a mcap-weighted return of 4.6% in the last week, making it the fourth-best-performing sector tracked by the platform (behind PolitiFi, SocialFi, and Memecoins).
>> Click here to keep track of your favorite Big Data & AI Tokens.
AI News Roundup
The last week was jam-packed with significant AI news, developments, and updates. We’ve collected some of the most significant stories for you below.
Illuvium Partners With Virtuals for AI-Powered NPCs: Early GameFi pioneer Illuvium has partnered with Virtuals Protocol to bring autonomous AI-powered NPCs to its games using the G.A.M.E. AI framework. This collaboration will allow NPCs to dynamically adjust quests, dialogue, and challenges based on player actions in Illuvium's games, providing each player with a unique gameplay experience.
O.XYZ Secures $130M for Decentralized AI Development: Ahmad Shadid, founder of IO.net, has invested $130 million into AI crypto startup O.XYZ to develop DeAIO, a decentralized AI-managed organization. This system allows contributors to vote on AI decisions and aims to function independently of corporate control, enhancing community engagement and reward mechanisms.
OpenAI Close to AGI, Says Sam Altman: OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman claims they have developed a clear roadmap to build Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He emphasized the potential of AGI to replace human tasks in the economy, though this development is still met with skepticism from some experts.
NVIDIA Unveils $3,000 Personal AI Supercomputer at CES 2025: NVIDIA has launched Project DIGITS, a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer compact enough to be used on desktops. This new device is capable of running AI models with up to 200 billion parameters, making advanced AI accessible without the need for cloud infrastructures. Project Digits is aimed at AI researchers and enthusiasts, offering significant computational power for local AI development.
>> That’s a wrap for this week’s recap. Check back next week for more AI news, insights, and analyses.
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