The last week has been a topsy-turvy time for the crypto market, with most tokens experiencing a significant rally before retracing their entire move.
TL;DR…
- Crypto Rollercoaster: Most tokens surged early in the week, then fell back, encapsulating a volatile market.
- AI Tokens Down: Despite this week’s drop, the sector continues to see promising behind-the-scenes momentum and investments.
- Bearish Overall: Bitcoin’s dip to $92,500 catalyzed a broader market decline, with cryptos mostly shedding value.
- AI Bright Spots: Some AI tokens bucked trends, notably DEXE and VANA; major funding rounds highlighted ongoing development and investor interest.
The last week has been a topsy-turvy time for the crypto market, with most tokens experiencing a significant rally before retracing their entire move.
Now, most AI tokens are down for the week, but momentum appears to be building behind the scenes with the industry garnering significant investment and interest.
Let’s take a closer look at the latest happenings in the sector.
>> Miss last week’s update? Check it out here.
Market Overview
The market is in a serious state of decline this week, with the vast majority of cryptocurrencies down more than 5% in this period.
The declining market was precipitated by the weakening of Bitcoin (BTC) which fell to a weekly low of under $92,500 last Friday, before struggling to recover to its current value of around $96,400.
The CMC Crypto Fear & Greed Index has also cooled off somewhat. It now sits at a more reasonable 63/100 (barely more than neutral). This is down from last week's 69 (greed) and last month's 80 (extreme greed).
The faded bullish sentiment has knocked altcoins markets seeing BTC climb back to 57.3% market dominance—the same value as a month ago.
AI Market Recap
Last week was a particularly volatile time for AI tokens, with many experiencing a mid-week rally before retracing most or all of their gains.
Overall, the AI sector has seen its market capitalization slide from $53.2 billion to $50.3 billion during this time, equivalent to a 5.5% loss across the board.
Nine of the top 10 AI tokens by market capitalization are now down for the week.
The sector has reverted most of the growth seen in early December but is still up over the last 30 days.
Source: Big Data & AI Tokens Page
A handful of AI tokens have managed to completely buck the recent bearish trend, posting a net gain for the week.
Some of this week’s best performers currently include:
- DeXe (DEXE): gained 64.5%
- Vana (VANA): gained 30.3%
- Turbo (TURBO): gained 20.4%
- ChainGPT (CGPT): gained 18.8%
Roughly 80% of AI tokens are in the red over the last week, but some have been hit particularly hard. Some of this week’s most notable underperformers include:
- Zero1 Labs (DEAI): lost 20.3%
- Mode (MODE): lost 18.6%
- AIOZ Network (AIOZ): lost 18.2%
- NetMind Token (NMT): lost 12.8%
Source: FARTCOIN Token Page
Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) also stands out as one of the week’s worst performers, with a 24.7% loss. The AI-created meme coin briefly hit an all-time high of $1.30 last week after being listed on Binance Future’s trading platform before seeing its momentum falter.
The sector remains one of the most actively developed sectors and a popular investment destination for investors looking to speculate at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence.
In the last week alone there were several multi-million dollar funding rounds for decentralized AI projects, with one such project raising $17 million (more on this later).
Source: Google Trends
Indeed, there has been a growing search volume for the terms "decentralized AI" and “crypto AI” over the last year.
According to DefiLlama’s narrative tracker, the AI sector is among the best-performing sectors this past week.
Its seven-day mcap-weighted category performance sits at +4%, indicating it is gaining ground on other categories in terms of relative growth. The AI sector is the sixth-best performer of the 22 sectors tracked, with prediction markets coming in first place with a +15.6% gain, and data availability tokens coming in 22nd place with a -5.5% mcap-weighted change.
AI News Roundup
We’ve collected five of the most significant recent AI news stories, updates, and developments in our weekly news roundup.
Sonic and Injective Partner on Cross-Chain AI Agent Platform: Sonic (formerly Fantom) and Injective have partnered to create the industry's first cross-chain Smart Agent Hub. This innovation connects the Solana and Injective ecosystems using Sonic’s HyperGrid technology, facilitating the creation, management, and monetization of AI agents across different blockchains.
XAI Raises $6 Billion in Bid To Challenge OpenAI: Elon Musk's AI startup, XAI, has completed a $6 billion Series C funding round with significant contributions from investors like A16Z, Blackrock and Fidelity. The funds will be used to expand their AI infrastructure and develop new consumer and enterprise products.
OpenAI Announces Its Most Powerful Model Yet: The new o3 model by OpenAI introduces improved reasoning for complex applications in two variants: o3 and the more efficient o3-mini. It's currently in an early access phase available to select researchers, as broader availability is slated for early 2025.
Tether CEO Announces Upcoming AI Platform Launch: Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino recently announced the 2025 launch of an AI platform, funded by half of Tether’s $10 billion net profits from 2024, which will focus on cross-industry applications. Details on the nature of the platform have not yet been revealed.
ChainOpera Completes $17 Million Seed Round: ChainOpera AI has successfully raised $17 million in a seed round led by IDG Capital, Finality Capital and Road Capital. The funding will support the development of a blockchain L1 and AI operating system for decentralized AI agents and applications. (source)
>> That’s all for this week’s AI roundup. Join us next week for another dose of AI analyses, news, and updates!
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