Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)
At the CES 2025 US Consumer Electronics Show on January 7, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, a leading figure in the AI industry, stated that "AI Agent is expected to become the next robot industry, with a market size of trillions of dollars." Although the audience at the event reacted calmly to this bold statement, the crypto industry has already bought into AI Agent - VIRTUAL, ai16z, Swarms and other AI Agent-related tokens have become one of the few attention-grabbing spots in the recent market, and their price performance has been brighter than the overall market; in contrast, a number of old-fashioned AI concept-related projects, such as FET, WLD, and ARKM, have been somewhat gloomy recently, with their prices having fallen significantly from their highs.
Odaily Planet Daily will compare and analyze the new and old AI concept tokens in this article to get a glimpse of the market trend.
Current Status of New and Old AI Concept Tokens: AI Agent Tokens Are Popular, AI Concept Tokens Are Cold
From the perspective of the market, the AI Agent tokens represented by VIRTUAL, ai16z, and Swarms are undoubtedly the most eye-catching projects at the moment. Compared to AI concept tokens such as FET, WLD, and ARKM, the former not only incorporate the AI concept, but also have a grander narrative, lower participation threshold, and higher expected returns. In my opinion, the main reasons are as follows:
Market Inertia of Chasing New Coins, Not Old Ones: New Cars Are More Popular Than Old Ones
As an industry that operates 24/7, the cryptocurrency market is known for its pursuit of new hotspots and new technologies, which has led to the industry's habit of "chasing new coins, not old ones": for retail investors and the crypto community, AI Agent-related new coins are more attractive than "old AI coins" with large numbers of participants, concentrated chip distribution, and widespread bag holders - the entry threshold is lower, and the opportunity to get on board is greater, whether in terms of the price of a single token or the overall market capitalization.
More Sexy Narratives: AI Agent Is More Attractive Than "Riding the AI Concept"
From the perspective of the most discussed narratives in the crypto industry, events such as AI Agent token issuance, speculation, and social media content interaction are undoubtedly more interesting, more fun, and more discussion-worthy than simply "riding the AI concept" as a serious and earnest project.
After the emergence of Truth Terminal (GOAT), the crypto industry has opened a Pandora's box of AI Agent, unleashing the power of AI in a way that many had not previously anticipated, endowing crypto with a stronger technological and futuristic attribute, as well as a more imaginative narrative - AI Agent in the crypto field can not only help humans produce content, but also has the possibility of directly participating in human social and economic activities, and monetary transactions.
Differences in Project Roadmaps: Teams, Technologies, and Development Directions Are Very Different
In terms of project development roadmaps, the current AI Agent and token projects have certain differences compared to the old-fashioned AI concept coin projects.
In terms of the team, the AI Agent and token projects are often led by solo developers in the early stage. On the one hand, AI and AI Agent provide developers and even ordinary people with a lower-cost and lower-threshold development path; on the other hand, independent developers can respond more quickly to market hotspots and adjust project direction based on market feedback, with relatively lower decision-making and optimization costs, which can be described as more in line with the "grassroots" positioning; the old-fashioned AI concept projects often started with mature teams, with grand mission visions, relying on grand narratives to attract large investments, with project development progress measured in years, and more responsible to investors than to the community. FET (Fetch.ai) is a typical case, having raised $5 million in March 2021 and $40 million in March 2023, and being the second crowdfunding project launched by Binance IEO, which can be said to be the product of top-tier resources.
In terms of technology, the previous AI concept coin-related projects tended to view technology as a tool and packaging, focusing on actual use cases and user scenarios, but the actual implementation was far from AI, with a relatively strong sense of distance from users; while the current AI Agent and token projects are relatively more straightforward, with the technical origin being the AI technology that has experienced a technological explosion, the threshold for understanding is relatively lower, and the technical extensibility is stronger, allowing users to actually operate it themselves, and the user education on the technical side is more direct and in-depth.
In terms of development direction, the old-fashioned AI concept coin projects focus more on using AI to build the future digital economy, which sounds more like "pie in the sky", with a relatively limited connection to the interests of the market and users; while the AI Agent and token projects not only have a specific visual image for users to interact with, but the token trading is also more direct, whether it is speculative trading or social media interaction, which is more in line with market demand.
In summary, the AI Agent token projects including VIRTUAL, ai16z, and Swarms are more like Meme coins disguised as AI; while the AI concept coins including FET, WLD, and ARKM are closer to the "VC coin" concept, more distant from the community, and their Meme attributes are vastly different from the former, and their topic discussion is also difficult to compare with the new hotspot AI Agent and the developers behind it, gradually drifting away from value discovery.
Overview of the Recent Situation of Old-Fashioned AI Concept Coins: Projects Steadily Advancing, Tokens Experiencing Deflation, Dump, and Unlocking Differently
Although the market performance has been relatively calm, the various old-fashioned AI concept coin-related projects have made varying degrees of progress recently, with the specific information as follows:
FET: 5 Million Tokens to Be Burned on January 10
The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance behind FET announced on January 5 that it plans to burn the first 5 million FET tokens on January 10, thereby creating deflationary pressure in its ecosystem, which is also part of its ASI Train model roadmap.
Perhaps the heat of the AI sector makes it difficult for FET to remain indifferent, and it needs to do its utmost to strive for more market attention for its token performance and project development.
WLD: Project Steadily Advancing, Token Transfer Still Ongoing
Worldcoin previously launched Worldchain and in November last year launched the new World ID Passport Credential, which is currently being piloted in countries such as Chile, Colombia, Malaysia and South Korea. The World ID credential allows individuals to connect a valid form of ID (starting with NFC-enabled passports) to their World ID without having to share any information with TFH, the World Foundation, or any other third party. At the same time, the World Foundation is providing WLD tokens to individuals with valid World ID passport credentials.
According to the email information released by Worldcoin to users, the number of Worldcoin community participants has reached 20 million. As for the tokens, according toPeshield monitoring, the Alameda marked address once transferred about 5 million WLD (worth about $16 million) to addresses0xd9C4 and 0xEF90.
ARKM: Platform function update, derivatives exchange promotion ongoing
As Arkham, which once gained extremely high attention from a large number of crypto KOLs in the Chinese community due to "indifferent in the past, now unattainable", is still working hard in the field of blockchain data analysis platform. On January 6, according to the official announcement, Arkham announced the addition of a Market Data page, supporting users to track important token data of spot, futures and options products in multiple CEXs.
In November last year, Arkham officially announced that it would launch the derivatives exchange ARKHAM PERPETUALS EXCHANGE, and subsequently launched the ARKHAM EXCHANGE POINTS system, encouraging users to trade and earn points. Subsequently, the official has taken actions to guide registration on multiple X platforms, but the effect is minimal so far.
For the platform, acquiring new users is still the top priority
Overview of the market situation: The historical decline of the old-brand AI tokens is as high as 81%
As of the time of writing, the market performance of the "old-brand AI concept coins" with certain representativeness is as follows:
FET is currently reported at $1.35, with a 24-hour decline of 13.11%, and the historical high price was $3.48, with a historical decline of about 61.5%; the market value is currently reported at $3.54 billion;
WLD is currently reported at $2.27, with a 24-hour decline of 13.21%, and the historical high price was $11.96, with a historical decline of about 81%; the market value is currently reported at $1.96 billion;
ARKM is currently reported at $1.4, with a 24-hour decline of 15.98%, and the historical high price was $2.7, with a historical decline of about 48%; the market value is currently reported at $468 million.
At the same time, the market value of AI Agent-related tokens has been rising all the way, and has now stabilized at a key node. According to Coingecko data, among them:
VIRTUAL is currently priced at $3.59, with a market value of about $3.59 billion;
ai16z is currently priced at $1.83, with a market value of about $2 billion;
swarms is currently priced at $0.35, with a market value of about $350 million.
To a certain extent, in terms of market performance and discussion, AI Agent-related token projects have already caught up.
Conclusion: Can the old tree blossom again? It depends on the response of the old-brand projects
At the end of the article, we can only judge phased that the old-brand AI concept token projects are temporarily behind the latest hot AI Agent token projects; as for whether the old-brand projects can rejuvenate, find new growth points and regain market attention, it mainly depends on these projects' follow-up and iteration on new technologies, new routes and new hotspots.
If they sit idly by, everything will naturally come to an end; if they strive to catch up, there may be different results and answers.
Attached token unlocking query website:
FET - https://tokenomist.ai/fetch-ai, the next large-scale unlocking will be opened on January 28, 2025, with an unlocking amount of 3.34 million tokens;
WLD - https://tokenomist.ai/worldcoin-wld, the next large-scale unlocking will be opened on June 24, 2026.
