The cumulative market capitalization of AI tokens increased by 14.9% in the last 24 hours, reaching $49 billion. To put that in perspective, meme coins, a much older sector, now have a market cap of $117 billion with a 24-hour change of +8.9%.
Top gainers include Virtuals Protocol ($VIRTUALS) and ai16z ($AI16Z), both of which are now among the top 10 AI coins.
Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly Capital expects AI agent coins to surpass meme coins in 2025. In a strikingly insightful remark, Qureshi says that the crypto community is moving from financial nihilism to excessive optimism.
The question is: will the AI token trend continue?
AI agents are ushering in a new era in cryptocurrency
A year ago, the idea of an AI agent independently managing a crypto ecosystem seemed like something out of a sci-fi horror film. Something like Ex Machina.
Today, projects like Virtuals Protocol, Artificial Superintelligence Alliance and ai16z form a fast-growing AI agent coin sector with a market cap of $16 billion (20.5% increase in 24 hours!).
Notably, $VIRTUALS saw no significant activity since its launch in early 2023 until its price surged over 9,190% in November.
AI agents should not be confused with AI bots. AI agents are more advanced and autonomous and can learn, adapt and make complex decisions. Bots typically follow predefined rules and perform specific tasks.
Qureshi predicts that this trend will accelerate in 2025 but will eventually subside. The novelty will wear off and the mood will reverse. However, this is unlikely to happen anytime soon and we are sure that new AI agent token projects will continue to flood the market.
What is behind the AI facade?
There is no shortage of AI agent tokens on the market. But how good are the projects behind these tokens?
According to Querishi, most AI agents are simply old-school chatbots with a meme coin facade. Additionally, project teams work behind the scenes to ensure their agent doesn’t say anything that will harm their reputation.
The bottom line is that meme-flavored AI agents don’t actually do anything worthwhile. The real disruption from AI will not be in social media, but in software development and commerce. AI agents have the potential to make both the financial markets and software development much more efficient.
The missing piece for AI agent innovation
If AI is so powerful, what’s stopping developers from building truly useful AI agents? Why are there so few of them?
The biggest bottleneck is the lack of reliable infrastructure. For crypto AI agents to handle complex, frequent tasks at scale, they need scalable networks with low transaction costs.
Most AI agent tokens run on Ethereum or Solana. Both blockchains are often overloaded, resulting in slow transaction processing and high costs.
A possible solution for this is Layer 2 solutions (L2). Ethereum has its fair share of L2 networks, but Solana does not.
Fortunately, this could soon change thanks to Solaxy ($SOLX). Built on Solana, this L2 network aims to increase transaction throughput and reduce gas fees by handling some of the workload off-chain.
Without congestion, outages, and failed transactions, Solana would become a more attractive chain for AI agent developers. Ultimately, this would drive Solana’s growth in 2025 and encourage innovation in the industry.
$SOLX is currently available for pre-sale for $0.001588. To date, early adopters have invested over $7.7 million, much of which will go toward modernizing the network.
The project will launch its L2 after the token claim. The introduction of this Layer 2 will directly impact demand for $SOLX, giving the token solid potential for long-term growth.
Is there a life for AI beyond the hype?
Many see AI as a silver bullet, capable of solving any problem and accomplishing any task, from shitposting on X to stopping climate change. Of course, this is far from reality, but the pace of innovation in the AI sector is breathtaking and other technologies need to catch up.
For this reason, Solaxy could be exactly what AI token developers need to introduce more practical applications. However, no project has a 100% chance of success. We remind you to DYOR and only invest as much as you can afford to lose.