At the CES2025 consumer electronics show in the United States on January 7, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, a prominent figure in the AI industry, bluntly stated: "AI Agent has the potential to become the next robotics 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 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.
This article will compare and analyze the new and old AI concept tokens to get a glimpse of the market trend.
Current Situation of New and Old AI Concept Tokens: AI Agent Tokens Are Popular, AI Concept Tokens Are Cold
From the market perspective, 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. To explore the reasons, the author personally believes that it mainly includes the following aspects:
Market Inertia of "Chasing New, Not Old": New Cars Are More Popular, Old Cars Are Too Heavy
As an industry that operates 24/7, the cryptocurrency market's pursuit of new hotspots and new technologies can be said to be an industry-wide characteristic, which has also led to the convention of "chasing new, not old" tokens: for retail investors and the crypto community, new tokens related to the AI Agent concept are undoubtedly more attractive than "old AI coins" with a large number of buyers, concentrated chip distribution, and a wide range of trapped groups - the entry threshold is lower, and the opportunities to get on board are more, whether in terms of the price of a single token or the overall market capitalization.
More Sexy Narratives: AI Agent Is Much More Attractive Than "Riding the AI Concept"
From the perspective of the most discussed narratives in the cryptocurrency industry, events such as AI Agent token issuance, speculation, and social media content and fan interaction are undoubtedly more interesting, more fun, and more topical than simply "riding the AI concept" as a serious and earnest project.
After the appearance of Truth Terminal (GOAT), the cryptocurrency industry has opened a Pandora's box of AI Agent, unleashing the power of AI in a way that many people had not previously anticipated, endowing cryptocurrency with a stronger technological attribute, future attribute, and a more imaginative narrative - the 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 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 a lower-cost and lower-threshold development path for developers and even ordinary people; 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 costs and optimization and iteration costs, which can be described as more in line with the "grassroots" positioning. The old-fashioned AI concept projects, on the other hand, often started with mature teams, with grand mission visions, focusing on attracting large investments through grand narratives, with project development progress measured in years, and being more accountable to investors rather 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 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 strong sense of distance from users; while the current AI Agent and token projects are relatively more straightforward, with their technological origins in the post-technological explosion of AI technology, with a relatively lower threshold for understanding, and stronger technological extensibility, allowing users to personally get involved in actual operations, and more direct and in-depth user education on the technology side.
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 relevance to the market and users' interests; 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 like VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms are more like meme coins dressed in AI clothing; while the AI concept coins like FET, WLD, and ARKM are closer to the "VC coin" concept, more distant from the community, with a much weaker meme attribute compared to the former, and their topic discussion is also difficult to match the new hotspot AI Agent and the tokens and developers behind it, gradually drifting away from value discovery.
Overview of Old AI Concept Coins: Projects Steadily Advancing, Tokens Deflationary, Dumping, and Unlocking Differ
Although the market performance has been relatively flat, the various old-fashioned AI concept coin-related projects have still made varying degrees of progress recently. The specific information is as follows:
FET: 5 Million Tokens to Be Burned on January 10
The project behind FET, the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, announced on January 5 that it plans to burn 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 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 sharing 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 Peckshield monitoring, the Alameda-tagged address had transferred about 5 million WLD (worth about $16 million) to addresses 0xd9C4 and 0xEF90 in early December last year.
ARKM: Platform Function Updates, Derivatives Exchange Promotion Ongoing
As for Arkham, which once gained extremely high attention from a number of crypto KOLs in the Chinese community due to "previously indifferent, now unattainable", it is still working hard in the field of blockchain data analysis platforms. 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.
Last November, Arkham officially announced the launch of the ARKHAM PERPETUALS EXCHANGE derivatives exchange, and subsequently launched the ARKHAM EXCHANGE POINTS system to encourage users to trade and earn points. Subsequently, the official has been promoting the exchange on multiple X platforms, but the results have been minimal so far.
Overview of the Market Situation: The Largest AI Tokens Have Dropped Up to 81% Historically
As of the time of writing, the market performance of the "established AI concept tokens" with a certain degree of representativeness is as follows:
FET is currently reported at $1.35, a 24-hour drop of 13.11%, with a historical high of $3.48 and a historical drop of about 61.5%; the market cap is currently $35.4 billion;
WLD is currently reported at $2.27, a 24-hour drop of 13.21%, with a historical high of $11.96 and a historical drop of about 81%; the market cap is currently $19.6 billion;
ARKM is currently reported at $1.4, a 24-hour drop of 15.98%, with a historical high of $2.7 and a historical drop of about 48%; the market cap is currently $4.68 billion.
Meanwhile, the market cap of AI Agent-related tokens has been rising steadily and has now stabilized at a critical point. According to Coingecko data, among them:
VIRTUAL is currently priced at $3.59, with a market cap of about $35.9 billion;
ai16z is currently priced at $1.83, with a market cap of about $20 billion;
swarms is currently priced at $0.35, with a market cap of about $3.5 billion.
To a certain extent, in terms of market performance and discussion, the AI Agent-related token projects have already caught up.
Conclusion: Can the Old Tree Bloom Again? It Depends on the Response of the Established Projects
In the end, we can only make a phased judgment that the established AI concept token projects are currently lagging behind the latest hot AI Agent token projects; as for whether the established projects can find a second spring, find new growth points and regain market attention, it mainly depends on whether these projects can keep up with and iterate on new technologies, new routes and new hotspots.
If they remain indifferent, 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 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.
