Author: Wenser, Odaily
At the CES 2025 in the United States on January 7, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, a prominent figure in the AI industry, directly stated: "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 - tokens related to VIRTUAL, ai16z, Swarms and other AI Agents have become one of the few attention-grabbing focuses in the recent market, and their price performance is still eye-catching compared to the overall market; in contrast, a number of old-fashioned AI concept-related projects, such as FET, WLD, and ARKM, have recently appeared somewhat gloomy, with prices having fallen significantly from their highs.
Odaily will compare and analyze the new and old AI concept tokens in this article 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 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 combine the AI concept, but also have a grander narrative, lower participation threshold, and higher expected returns. In my personal opinion, the main reasons are as follows:
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 characteristic, which has also led to the convention of "chasing new, not old" tokens: for retail investors and the crypto community, AI Agent-related new tokens are undoubtedly more attractive than "old AI tokens" with large numbers of participants, concentrated chip distribution, and widespread bagholders - 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, token speculation, and social media content interaction with fans are undoubtedly more interesting, more fun, and more topical than simply "riding the AI concept" as a serious and earnest project.
After the emergence of Truth Terminal (GOAT), the cryptocurrency industry has opened a Pandora's box of AI Agents, 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 Agents in the crypto field can not only help humans produce content, but also have 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 token projects.
In terms of the team, the AI Agent and token projects are often backed by solo developers in the early stage. On the one hand, AI and AI Agents 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 simply described as more in line with the "grassroots" positioning. The old-brand AI concept projects 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 relatively 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 old AI concept token-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 simple and straightforward, with the technological origin being AI technology after the 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 old-brand AI concept token projects focus more on using AI to build the future digital economy, which sounds more like "drawing a cake", with relatively limited relevance to the market and users' interests; while the AI Agent and token projects not only have specific visual images 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, with a completely different level of meme attributes and topic discussion compared to the new hotspot AI Agent and the developers behind it, and are naturally drifting further away from value discovery.
Overview of Old-Brand AI Concept Tokens: Projects Steadily Advancing, Tokens Experiencing Deflation, Dump, and Unlocking Differently
Although the market performance has been relatively calm, the various old-brand AI concept token-related projects have still 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 has made FET unable to sit idly by, needing 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 introduced the new World ID Passport Credential in November last year, 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 released 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 once 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 Arkham, which once gained extremely high attention from a number of crypto KOLs in the Chinese community due to "previously indifferent, now unattainable", is still diligently cultivating in the blockchain data analysis platform field. 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 registration on multiple X platforms, but the effect has been minimal so far.
For the platform, acquiring new users is still the top priority
Market Overview: The Oldest AI Tokens Have Dropped Up to 81% from Their Highs
As of the time of writing, the market performance of the "old-school AI concept tokens" that have a certain degree of representativeness is as follows:
- FET is currently trading at $1.35, a 24-hour drop of 13.11%. Its all-time high was $3.48, representing a historical decline of around 61.5%. Its market cap is currently $3.54 billion.
- WLD is currently trading at $2.27, a 24-hour drop of 13.21%. Its all-time high was $11.96, representing a historical decline of around 81%. Its market cap is currently $1.96 billion.
- ARKM is currently trading at $1.4, a 24-hour drop of 15.98%. Its all-time high was $2.7, representing a historical decline of around 48%. Its market cap is currently $468 million.
Meanwhile, the market caps of AI Agent-related tokens have been rising steadily and have now firmly established key support levels. According to CoinGecko data:
- VIRTUAL is currently priced at $3.59, with a market cap of around $3.59 billion.
- ai16z is currently priced at $1.83, with a market cap of around $2 billion.
- swarms is currently priced at $0.35, with a market cap of around $350 million.
To a certain extent, in terms of market performance and discussion, the AI Agent-related token projects have already caught up with the old-school AI concept tokens.
Conclusion: Can the Old Trees Bloom Again? It Depends on the Response of the Old-School Projects
In the end, we can only make a provisional judgment that the old-school AI concept token projects are currently lagging behind the latest hot AI Agent token projects. As for whether the old-school projects can find a second spring, discover new growth points, and regain market attention, it mainly depends on how these projects follow up and iterate on new technologies, new routes, and new hot spots.
If they remain indifferent, everything will naturally come to a halt; if they pursue them vigorously, there may be different results and answers.
