The AI crypto sector gained 15.6% (~$3.1B mcap), with major tokens like ALEPH and PAAL rising over 50% in a week.
TL;DR…
- AI tokens surge following market rebound: The AI crypto sector gained 15.6% (~$3.1B mcap), with major tokens like ALEPH and PAAL rising over 50% in a week.
- Tariff pause boosts sentiment: Improved market optimism followed Donald Trump’s decision to pause tariffs, sparking a broad market recovery, with Bitcoin and Ethereum showing renewed strength.
- AI sector sees big winners and losers: While 80% of AI tokens gained, a few—like Cortex and Nillion—saw double-digit losses, highlighting ongoing volatility.
- Major AI developments hit headlines: OpenAI preps GPT-4.1; Spanish police bust €19M AI scam; Octane raises $6.75M for AI blockchain security platform.
Following several weeks of dramatic decline, the cryptocurrency space is once again showing signs of strength.
Most fundamentally strong assets are showing signs of recovery, while the AI sector is leading the way with significant growth seen among its top assets.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s behind this recent change in direction.
>> Did you miss last week’s AI update? Check it out here.
Market Overview
This week marks a break from the recent bearish activity seen by most markets, with positive momentum practically across the board.
This comes alongside improved sentiment, largely due to Donald Trump’s decision to pause the most recently introduced tariffs amidst ongoing trade deal negotiations.
Source: Bitcoin (BTC) Coin Page
Bitcoin (BTC) is now trading at ~$84,500 after gaining 5.5% in the last seven days and recovering from a low of $75,000 seen last Friday. Meanwhile, Ethereum (ETH) is back at ~$1,660, leading some to believe that altcoin season is back on the cards again.
Source: CMC Crypto Fear and Greed Index
Despite the positive turn of events, the CMC Crypto Fear and Greed Index remains firmly in the 'fear' territory at 29—though it’s much improved from last week's all-time low of 15.
With growing hopes for positive trade discussions between the U.S. and China, a note of cautious optimism is starting to appear.>> Click here to learn more about the current market activity.
AI Sector Recap
After several weeks of decline, the AI sector is again showing signs of strength. Overall, the sector added close to $3.1 billion market capitalization (mcap), gaining 15.6% in a week.
Source: Top AI & Big Data Tokens Page
The vast majority of AI tokens are up considerably over the last week, with gains of 10-30% common among the top 100.
Currently, eight of the top 10 AI tokens by mcap are in the green, with the only stragglers being DeXe (DEXE) and Story (IP), down 2.4% and 5.5%, respectively.
Some of this week’s best-performing AI tokens include:
- Aleph Cloud (ALEPH): gained 75.2%
- tokenbot (CLANKER): gained 60.6%
- PAAL AI (PAAL): gained 54.2%
- Qubic (QUBIC): gained 50%
- AIOZ Network (AIOZ): gained 49.3%
Around 20% of AI tokens have remained in the red over the last week. Some of the worst performers currently include:
- Cortex (CTXC): lost 46.6%
- MyShell (SHELL): lost 21.3%
- Nillion (NIL): lost 19.8%
- TARS AI (TAI): lost 17.2%
- Grass (GRASS): lost 14.3%
Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUALS) made headlines this week after being listed on Binance following a vote-to-win victory. Several Virtuals-based tokens also soared, including Acolyte by Virtuals (ACOLYT) and sekoia by Virtuals (SEKOIA).
Source: Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) Token Page
Meanwhile, Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) gained a staggering 72.8% this week, alongside surging interest in the AI agent subsector. The token is now more than 4x from its recent local bottom.
According to DefiLlama’s narrative tracker, the AI sector is ranked fourth out of the 22 sectors tracked by the platform in terms of mcap-weighted performance. The sector saw mcap-weighted growth of 14.7%, with the Solana, DePIN, and meme sectors capturing the top three spots.
AI News Roundup
Another week, another wave of major updates in the AI space.
Here, we’ve collected an assortment of this week’s most significant updates to keep you in the loop.
Octane Raises $6.75M for AI-Driven Blockchain Security Platform: Octane, an AI cybersecurity startup, has secured $6.75 million in seed funding co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital. The company’s platform employs machine learning to analyze blockchain codebases continuously, identify vulnerabilities, and address them before exploitation. It assists developers in detecting bugs prior to deployment and throughout the software development cycle, with plans to extend analysis to off-chain codebases.
Spanish Police Dismantle AI-Driven €19M Crypto Scam: Spanish authorities arrested six individuals involved in a €19 million (around $21.6 million) cryptocurrency fraud targeting over 200 victims. The scheme utilized AI-generated ads featuring fake celebrity endorsements to promote fraudulent investment opportunities. Victims were shown fabricated profits to build trust and were encouraged to invest more, often converting all their savings into cryptocurrency. The operation employed fake identities, shell companies, and AI-driven targeting to identify and scam potential victims
OpenAI Prepares Launch of GPT-4.1 and Successor Models: OpenAI is set to release GPT-4.1, an enhanced version of its multimodal GPT-4o model, along with smaller variants GPT-4.1 mini and nano. The company is also preparing to introduce new reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini. These launches aim to advance real-time processing across text, audio, and vision. Capacity constraints may affect rollout timelines. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also teased an array of new launches.
>> That’s all we’ve got for this week’s update. Check in next week to keep on top of the latest AI news and insights.
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