Comparison of new and old AI concept coins: Chasing the rising sun once more before the sunset

原創| Odaily星球日報（ @Odaily中國 )

作者：溫瑟（ @溫瑟2010 )

At the CES 2025 U.S. Consumer Electronics Show on January 7, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, a leading figure in the AI industry, 說 bluntly : AI Agent is expected to become the next robotics industry, with an industry scale of trillions of dollars. Although the audience at the event had a lukewarm reaction to this bold statement , the 加密貨幣 industry has already bought in to AI Agents. AI Agent-related tokens such as VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms have become one of the few focuses of attention in the market recently, and their price trends are still impressive compared to the broader market. In contrast, a number of old-line AI concept-related projects, such as FET, WLD, and ARKM, have been a little lonely recently, and their prices have fallen sharply compared to their highs.

Odaily Planet Daily will conduct a comparative analysis of new and old AI concept tokens in this article to gain a glimpse into the market trends.

Current status of new and old AI concept coins: AI Agent tokens are popular, while AI concept coins are unpopular

From a market perspective, AI Agent tokens represented by VIRTUAL, ai16z, and swarms are undoubtedly the most eye-catching projects at the moment. Compared with AI concept tokens such as FET, WLD, and ARKM, the former not only combines AI concepts, but also has a more ambitious narrative angle, a lower participation threshold, and greater expected returns. The reasons for this are mainly the following:

市場 inertia of buying new cars instead of old ones: new cars are easier to carry, old cars are too heavy

As an industry that operates 24/7, the cryptocurrency market’s pursuit of new hot spots and new technologies can be said to be a common industry feature, which has also led to the practice of “speculating on new but not old” tokens: for retail investors and the crypto community, compared with “old AI coins” with a large number of buyers, concentrated distribution of chips, and a large number of locked-in groups, new coins with AI Agent-related concepts are undoubtedly more attractive – the buying threshold is lower, and there are more opportunities to get on board, whether from the perspective of the price of a single token or the overall market value.

Narratives are sexier: AI Agents are far more attractive than just “freeloading on the AI concept”

From the perspective of the most discussed narrative in the cryptocurrency industry, events such as AI Agent issuing coins, speculating on coins, publishing social media content and interacting with fans are undoubtedly more interesting, more fun and more discussed than doing a serious project to hard-core and try to use the AI concept.

After the emergence of Truth Terminal (GOAT), the cryptocurrency industry opened a Pandoras box of AI Agents, liberating the power of AI in a way that many people had not expected before, and endowing cryptocurrency with stronger technological attributes, future attributes, and more imaginative narratives – AI Agents in the encryption field can do more than just help humans produce content, but have the possibility of directly participating in human social and economic activities and currency transactions.

Differences in project routes: teams, technologies, and development directions are very different

In terms of project development routes, current AI Agent and token projects also have certain differences compared to previous old AI concept coin projects.

At the team level , AI Agent and token projects are often developed by single 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, relatively independent developers can follow up on market hot spots in a more rapid manner and adjust project directions according to market feedback. The decision-making cost and optimization iteration cost are relatively lower. To put it bluntly, it is more in line with the positioning of a grassroots team; the old AI concept projects in the past often started with mature teams, with grand missions and visions, and emphasized attracting high-value investments through grand narratives. The project development progress is measured in years, and relatively speaking, it is more responsible to investors rather than originating from the community. For example, FET ( 獲取.ai ) is a typical case. It not only raised US$5 million and US$40 million in March 2021 and March 2023, respectively, but is also the second crowdfunding project issued by Binance IEO. It can be said to be a product of top resources.

從 a technical perspective , previous AI concept coin-related projects viewed technology more as a tool and packaging, emphasizing practical use cases and user scenarios, but the actual business implementation was far from AI and had a strong sense of distance from users. Todays AI Agent and token projects are relatively simpler and cruder. Their technical origin lies in AI technology after a technological explosion. The threshold for understanding is relatively low, and the technology is more extensible. Users can personally engage in actual operations, and technical user education is more direct and in-depth.

按照 development direction , the direction of the old AI concept coin projects is more emphasized on building the future digital economy with the help of AI, which sounds more like pie in the sky and has limited relevance to the interests of the market and users. However, AI Agent and token projects not only have specific visual images for users to interact with, but also more direct token transactions, which better meet market demand whether it is speculation or social media interaction.

In summary, AI Agent token projects including VIRTUAL, ai16z, swarms, etc. are more like Meme coins in AI guise; while AI concept coins including FET, WLD, ARKM, etc. are closer to the concept of VC coins, farther away from the community, and their Meme attributes are far different from the former. The topic discussion is also difficult to be compared with the new hot AI Agents and the tokens and developers behind them, and they are naturally moving further and further away from value discovery.

Overview of the latest status of old AI concept coins: the project is progressing steadily, and the tokens are deflated, smashed, and unlocked in different ways

Although the market performance is relatively flat, various old AI concept coin-related projects have been promoted to varying degrees recently. The following is a detailed introduction:

FET: 5 million tokens will be destroyed on January 10

The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, the project behind FET, previously 宣告 on January 5 that it plans to carry out the first destruction of 5 million FET tokens on January 10, thereby creating deflationary pressure in its ecosystem. This milestone is also part of the ASI Train model in its roadmap.

Perhaps, the popularity of the AI sector makes it difficult for FET to sit idly by, and it needs to rack its brains to gain more market attention for token performance and project development.

WLD: The project is progressing steadily and token transfer is still continuing

Worldcoin previously launched Worldchain and launched the new World ID Passport Credential in November last year , which is currently being piloted in select countries including Chile, Colombia, Malaysia and South Korea. The World ID credential allows individuals to connect a valid form of ID (starting with an NFC-enabled passport) to their World ID without sharing any information with TFH, the World Foundation or any other third party. At the same time, the World Foundation is providing WLD tokens to individuals with a valid World ID passport certificate.

此外，根據 the email information released by Worldcoin to users, the number of Worldcoin community participants has reached 20 million. As for tokens, in early December last year, according to Paidun’s monitoring , the Alameda marker address transferred about 5 million WLD (worth about 16 million US dollars) to addresses 0xd9C4 and 0xEF90 .

ARKM: Platform function update, derivatives exchange promotion in progress

Arkham, which once received high attention from a number of crypto KOLs in the Chinese community for its “indifferent response before, but now out of reach”, is still working hard in the field of blockchain data analysis platform. On January 6, according to 官方公告 , Arkham announced the addition of a Market Data page, which supports users to track important token data of spot, futures and options products in multiple CEXs.

In November last year, Arkham 正式宣布 that it would launch the derivatives exchange ARKHAM PERPETUALS EXCHANGE, and later launched the exchange points system (ARKHAM EXCHANGE POINTS) to encourage users to trade and earn points. Subsequently, the official took actions to attract registrations under multiple X platform tweets, but so far, the results have been minimal.

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

Market status at a glance: The historical decline of old AI tokens is as high as 81%

As of the time of writing, the market performance of the representative “old AI concept coins” is as follows:

場效管 is currently trading at $1.35, down 13.11% in 24 hours, with a historical high of $3.48 and a historical decline of about 61.5%; the market value is currently trading at $3.54 billion;

世界LD is currently trading at $2.27, down 13.21% in 24 hours, with a historical high of $11.96 and a historical decline of about 81%; the market value is currently trading at $1.96 billion;

阿爾克曼 is currently priced at $1.4, down 15.98% in 24 hours. Its historical highest price is $2.7, with a historical decline of approximately 48%. Its market value is currently reported at $468 million.

At the same time, the market value of AI Agent-related tokens has been rising all the way and has now stabilized at a critical node. According to Coingecko 數據 , among them:

VIRTUALs price is currently reported at $3.59, and its market value is currently reported at $3.59 billion;

The price of ai16z is currently reported at $1.83, and its market value is currently reported at around $2 billion;

The swarms price is currently reported at $0.35, and the market value is currently reported at around $350 million.

To some extent, in terms of market performance and discussion, AI Agent-related token projects are already on par.

Conclusion: Can old trees bloom new flowers? It depends on the response of old projects

At the end of the article, we can only make a temporary judgment that the old AI concept token projects are temporarily lagging behind the latest hot AI Agent token projects; as for whether the old projects can have a second spring, find new growth points and regain market attention, it mainly depends on these projects follow-up and iteration of new technologies, new routes and new hot spots.

If you sit back and do nothing, everything will come to an end; if you catch up, perhaps there will be different results and answers.

代幣 unlock query website:

場效管 — https://tokenomist.ai/fetch-ai , the next large unlock will be on January 28, 2025, with 3.34 million tokens unlocked;

WLD—— https://tokenomist.ai/worldcoin-wld , the next large unlock will start on June 24, 2026.

This article is sourced from the internet: Comparison of new and old AI concept coins: Chasing the rising sun once more before the sunset

Related: HTX Growth Academy | DeSci Research Report: Blockchain Reshapes Scientific Research

1. Background and Introduction Since the Enlightenment, scientific research has promoted the rapid development of human civilization. However, with the continuous centralization of the modern scientific system, many challenges have gradually emerged, including uneven distribution of scientific research resources, disputes over the ownership of intellectual property rights, insufficient data transparency, and academic monopoly. These problems have hindered the efficiency of scientific discovery to a certain extent, and even affected the fairness and inclusiveness of science. Decentralized Science (DeSci) is an emerging concept based on blockchain technology, which aims to transform the existing scientific ecology through a transparent and decentralized technology system, giving researchers and the public more rights and choices. DeSci has brought revolutionary changes to the governance model, knowledge sharing mechanism, and funding model of scientific research, and its…