Crypto's Latest Meta? AI Agent Tokens Like AI16z and Virtuals Skyrocket

AI agents, associated meme coins, and the protocols used to create these agents are among the top five best performing crypto assets of the day, according to CoinGecko. The recent surge is driving speculation that AI will be the latest “meta” for crypto traders to latch onto, though some traders and analysts aren’t yet convinced.

As a result, conversations have broken out across the industry about the role of artificial intelligence in the world of crypto. Some traders believe it's the start of the next crypto revolution, providing a fresh narrative to fuel potentially explosive gains—while others think it’s just another bubble waiting to pop.

Put simply, AI agents are models set out to perform specific tasks—such as Aixbt, which analyzes projects—or simply have a quirky personality that viewers enjoy. Some agents are tied to a crypto token, either as a way to fundraise or to promote and brand itself.

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Others have simply shilled meme coins. For example, Truth Terminal—the agent that started much of this wave—has promoted Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) and Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) causing both to skyrocket. Fartcoin surged to a new all-time high price early Thursday.

Over the past 24 hours, AI agent tokens are up 18%, AI meme coins jumped by 20%, and agent launchpad tokens have collectively risen by over 21% as the best-performing category tracked by CoinGecko.

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Of these tokens, AI16z is one of the biggest winners of the week, rising 176% to a market cap over $2.2 billion—the third-largest of any AI-related token. This comes following Binance’s announcement that it would launch perpetual futures contracts trading for ai16z, alongside AI agent musician Zerebro and agent launchpad Griffain.

With this success, conversations about the actual purpose of these tokens have grown. One major gripe is that many agents are simply becoming non-human Twitter influencers that are, at times, annoying and inconsistent. 

“Chatbots can indeed replace a lot of influencers because chatbots never sleep, they're always on-message, and they’re less greedy than human influencers,” Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at venture fund Dragonfly, said on X. “Plus, the majority of influencers aren’t very original anyway.”

 Artificial Intelligence

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Other traders are concerned that of the thousands of projects launching claiming to be the next big AI agent, a large portion eventually reveal themselves to not be as advertised.

The Virtuals Protocol, launched on Ethereum layer-2 network Base, has looked to solve this problem by becoming the place to build and launch tokenized AI agents. As such, the project’s associated token VIRTUAL has become the largest AI crypto token on the market thanks to explosive growth—up almost 35,000% over the last year.

Still, most agent autonomy is limited. Truth Terminal, for example, still has creator Andy Ayrey looking over its shoulder before its thoughts and decisions go out to the public. But this level of oversight might not be a bad thing at this point, as Ayrey told Decrypt that he had to prevent Truth Terminal from attempting to incite a riot during election season in the U.S.

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Granting agents more autonomy is a long-term goal that many developers appear to be working towards. As such, the development and continued evolution of AI will likely dictate the growth of its intersection with crypto, with some traders admitting current agents are just “glorified chatbots” that don’t need tokens associated with them. 

“Right now these chatbots are fascinating to us because they are so novel. It’s like seeing an elephant paint,” Qureshi explained. “The first time you see it, you don’t really care that the painting is not very good—it’s spectacular to see. But the 1,000th time, the novelty wears thin.”

But as the AI agent buzz rages on, dominating the crypto industry’s mindshare, market participants are speculating on what an agent offering lending via its wallet or autonomous on-chain transactions could mean for the market.

On the other hand, Truth Terminal—according to Ayrey—appears to have used its AI prowess to dream up a branded line of butt plugs. AI is versatile, no doubt.

Edited by Andrew Hayward