Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | Wenser

At the CES2025 Consumer Electronics Show in the United States on January 7, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, a prominent figure in the AI industry, stated directly: "AI Agent is expected to become the next robot industry, with a market size of up to 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 focuses in the recent market, and their price performance is still eye-catching compared to the broader market; in contrast, a number of established AI concept-related projects such as FET, WLD, and ARKM have recently appeared somewhat gloomy, 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 thresholds, and higher expected returns. In my opinion, the main reasons are as follows:

Market Inertia of Chasing New Trends: New Cars Are Popular, Old Cars Are Heavy

As an industry that operates 24/7, the cryptocurrency market is known for its pursuit of new hotspots and new technologies, which has also led to the industry's habit of "chasing new and not old" tokens: for retail investors and the crypto community, AI Agent-related new tokens are more attractive than "old AI tokens" 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 Attractive Narratives: AI Agent Is Much More Appealing 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 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 also have certain differences compared to the established AI concept token projects.

In terms of the team, the AI Agent and token projects are often led by solo developers in the early stages. 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 directions 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 established AI concept projects, on the other hand, often start with mature teams, with grand mission visions, focusing on attracting large investments through grand narratives, with project development progress measured in years, and more responsible to investors than originating from 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 token 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, and the user distance was relatively strong; while the current AI Agent and token projects are relatively more straightforward, with the technological origin being the AI technology that has experienced a technological explosion, the threshold for understanding is relatively lower, and the technological extensibility is stronger, allowing users to actually operate it themselves, and the user education on the technology is more direct and in-depth.

In terms of development direction, the established AI concept token 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 tokens 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 Established AI Concept Tokens: Projects Steadily Advancing, Tokens Experiencing Deflation, Dumping, and Unlocking Differently

Although the market performance has been relatively calm, the various established AI concept token-related projects have still made varying degrees of progress recently, with the specific information as follows:

FET: 500,000 Tokens to Be Burned on January 10

The project behind FET, the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, announced on January 5 that it plans to burn the first 500,000 FET tokens on January 10, thereby creating deflationary pressure in its ecosystem, which is also part of its ASI Train model roadmap.

Perhaps the hot AI sector has made 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 Transfers 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 needing to share any information with TFH, the World Foundation, or any other third party. Meanwhile, the World Foundation is providing WLD tokens to individuals with valid World ID passport credentials.

Additionally, according to email information sent by Worldcoin to users, the number of Worldcoin community participants has reached 20 million. As for the tokens, according to Paidun monitoring, the Alameda-tagged address had transferred about 5 million WLD (worth about $16 million) to the 0xd9C4 and 0xEF90 addresses in early December last year.

ARKM: Platform function updates, derivatives exchange promotion ongoing

As Arkham, which once gained 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. According to the official announcement on January 6, 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 the launch of 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 been promoting registration on multiple X platforms, but the effect has been minimal so far.

For the platform, acquiring new users is still the top priority

Overview of the current market: The historical decline of old-brand AI tokens can reach up to 81%

As of the time of writing, the market performance of the "old-brand AI concept tokens" with certain representativeness is as follows:

FET is currently priced at $1.35, with a 24-hour decline of 13.11%, and an all-time high of $3.48, with a historical decline of about 61.5%; the market cap is currently $3.54 billion;

WLD is currently priced at $2.27, with a 24-hour decline of 13.21%, and an all-time high of $11.96, with a historical decline of about 81%; the market cap is currently $1.96 billion;

ARKM is currently priced at $1.4, with a 24-hour decline of 15.98%, and an all-time high of $2.7, with a historical decline of about 48%; the market cap is currently $468 million.

Meanwhile, the market cap of AI Agent-related tokens has been rising steadily and has now stabilized at a critical level. According to Coingecko data, VIRTUAL is currently priced at $3.59 with a market cap of about $3.59 billion; ai16z is currently priced at $1.83 with a market cap of about $2 billion; and swarms is currently priced at $0.35 with a market cap 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 bloom again? It depends on the response of the old-brand projects

In the end, we can only make a phased judgment that the old-brand AI concept token projects are currently lagging behind the latest hot AI Agent token projects; as for whether the old-brand projects can find a second spring, 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 be at rest; if they strive to catch up, there may be different results and answers.

Token unlocking query website:

FET - https://tokenomist.ai/fetch-ai, the next major unlocking will be on January 28, 2025, with 3.34 million tokens unlocked;

WLD - https://tokenomist.ai/worldcoin-wld, the next major unlocking will be on June 24, 2026.