AI Agent Tokens Skyrocket as Franklin Templeton Highlights 'Significant Promise'

Artificial intelligence cryptocurrencies are still making sizable gains—just as asset manager Franklin Templeton highlights how big AI and crypto could be together.

Franklin Templeton said in a Tuesday note that how AI agents interact on blockchains is “very exciting.” And it noted the current buzz surrounding AI16z and the Virtuals Protocol—two tokens that have made some of the biggest gains over the past 24 hours among the top 100 coins ranked by market cap.

AI16z is an investment DAO run by AI agents. CoinGecko data shows that over the past day, its native token has risen by over 18%—after slowing down last week—and is now trading hands for $1.30. It briefly fell out of the top 100 on Monday, but has recovered and bounced back into such valuable company.

The world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, announced earlier this month that it would launch perpetual futures contracts trading for AI16z. Even with today's surge, however, AI16z is down 32% over the last week, and is 47% off its all-time high price of $2.47 set less than two weeks ago.

And Virtuals Protocol's VIRTUAL—a token launched on Ethereum layer-2 network Base last year—is up by 15% over the past day. It’s now priced at $2.98. Virtuals is used to launch a variety of AI agents, including AiXBT—a token that nearly matched its own all-time high price on Tuesday.

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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...

Both tokens had slowed their rallies down in recent days after a white-hot start to the year, but are making a comeback as the broader crypto market recovers Tuesday.

AI agent software programs are designed to help humans by completing tasks on their own. As the hype around AI has grown, many in the field have made big promises on how much such agents will help humans complete tasks. And some of these agents have their own tokens, adding potential utility and speculation into the equation.

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For years, crypto and AI users have sought to combine both emergent technologies into products greater than the sum of their parts: autonomous agents capable of making human-level decisions and spending digital money to complete complex tasks. In 2024, these lofty dreams started to become reality. There’s still a long way to go, of course. Crypto-powered AI agents capable of completing intricate human functions are still deep in development. But on X (formerly known as Twitter), a simpler AI age...

Franklin Templeton added that even if AI agents have some way to go to be as refined and useful as envision, the sector holds substantial promise.

“Although these agents are not yet fully autonomous, and have little utility in their current state, this emerging sector may hold significant promise and is worth watching closely as it evolves and matures,” the note said. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward