At the beginning of the new year, the AI Agent track continued to soar. In less than three months, this emerging track rose strongly with a growth of hundreds of times, becoming the dark horse of the crypto market in 2025. Behind this round of growth, technology and market demand formed a benign interaction, which not only pushed the track from short-term speculation to long-term development, but also brought a new narrative to the crypto industry.
1. AI Agent: A Hot Research Direction in AI
The term AI agents comes from OpenAI's roadmap. Sam Altman divides the capabilities that AI should have into five parts: dialogue (such as ChatGPT, which can conduct conversations); reasoning (logical reasoning like humans); agency (autonomous learning, decision-making and task execution); innovation (making creative technological breakthroughs); and organization (the final form, which can manage and run human organizations).
We are currently in the third stage of AI agent, which is not only in the field of Crypto, but also the hottest research direction in the entire AI community. Technology giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Twitter have all entered the field. Sam Altman has mentioned in many public occasions that Agent is one of the most critical directions for the future development of AI, and AI Agent will change the way humans interact with technology.
The current AI agent is still in its early stages and is only the most basic simple reflex agent, which is still a long way from achieving the goal of autonomous planning and executing complex tasks. However, this also indicates that the hype cycle in this field will continue for several years, and any technological progress will set off a huge wave in the market.
2. Crypto+Agent is a feasible route
When OpenAI just released ChatGPT, the protocols in the crypto industry were still in the inertial thinking and quickly poured into the infrastructure. A large number of computing power platforms emerged, and a batch of AI + DePIN infrastructures were born. Their grand vision was more oriented to the B-side, and user participation was minimal. In terms of implementation and user needs, it seemed like a castle in the air. After years of exploration, everyone found that this path was not feasible.
When AI developed from the computing power grabbing stage to the Agent stage, under the impact of the Memecoin craze, combined with the Memecoin startup project, it was possible to land products in a very short time, becoming a new feasible route. For example, AIXBT is providing market analysis services to more than 100,000 users; Luna, the AI live broadcast celebrity on TikTok, can provide brand marketing services; investment agent Ai16Z obtains market information on and off the chain and automatically conducts token transactions, etc.
The AI Agent with a series of functions allows users to directly experience the use of the product. In this process, the agent can also cleverly use Memecoin's roadmap to grow the community and achieve rapid product iteration, and this iteration is low-cost and fast. After market education and dissemination are fully carried out, on this basis, we can build the infrastructure of the grand vision, and the community culture and fundamentals will no longer be contradictory. Crypto+Agent has become a feasible route.
3. Development Stages of Crypto Market AI Agent
The development of AI Agent in the crypto market has gone through a process from AI meme to single AI application, and then to AI Agent Launchpad. It is currently in the process of evolving the AI Agent framework standard.
In the AI meme stage, Agents were mainly used to issue assets and were pure memes, driven by market trends and community sentiment. With the evolution of technology, single AI applications began to emerge, with certain practical functions, such as social media posting, investment analysis, and fund management. These applications met the needs of cryptocurrency users and were hyped by the market. After the wealth effect appeared, coin issuance platforms began to emerge, and single AI applications gradually expanded to more valuable scenarios.
As more and more different types of Agents emerge, the market begins to explore collaboration between different projects, and various Agent frameworks and standards emerge, starting to build their own ecosystems. This type of underlying infrastructure can help developers deploy various smarter Agent applications more easily and conveniently, and promote a large number of social and economic activities between Agents, which may give rise to new Agent identities, Agent asset accounts, Agent social networks, Agent settlement gateways, Agent governance DAOs, and other needs. With the support of AI Agents, we will start with the interaction between people and Agents and move towards the interaction between Agents. At that time, groups of autonomous Agents will interact and trade on the chain and be responsible for their own economic status. At this stage, cryptocurrency will completely unleash its potential and value in borderless collaboration, trustless networks, and 7*24h non-stop operation.
Frameworks and standards have a lot of room for imagination because they are backed by complex technical logic, but they are still in a stage of chaos. Of course, their development also relies heavily on the iterative development of AI technologies such as large models of Internet giants.
4. AI will be the biggest trend in the crypto market this year
Crypto market investment has always relied on imagination, and all the hyped assets in the past are like this. For example, the early DeFi used the traditional financial revolution as its narrative, while the concepts of NFT and the metaverse depicted a future where everyone lives in a virtual world. These stories are very imaginative. The grander the narrative, the more novel the concept, the more money chases it, and the higher the ceiling of the market's valuation. Even if some products are not qualified by traditional Internet standards, as long as they propose new gameplay and new hopes, they can reach an astonishing market value during the bull market.
Today, DeFi has not successfully attracted traditional financial assets to be traded on the blockchain, and the concept of the metaverse has not been successfully implemented by giants such as Facebook. Currently, in the cryptocurrency world, AI is undoubtedly the most imaginative subject, and other concepts are difficult to match.
In addition, in actual implementation, unlike the metaverse NFT, AI has actual value. Some current AI agent projects have already generated revenue, such as Virtuals; there are projects like Luna, which have more than 500,000 fans and already have considerable traffic. Some AI agents are even better than many manual ones as information aggregators. This is not an empty slogan, but something that can be seen. It is not a pseudo-demand with no practical value, but something that can bring changes to the crypto market. Although the overall function is still relatively low-level, AI is the future of global technology, and the technology iteration speed is extremely fast with large investments. The crypto market can often become the number one user of AI technology overflow from Internet giants and technology giants. Every new technology and new concept contains new opportunities.
Therefore, AI is not only full of imagination in the cryptocurrency world, but also can be implemented. Once a landing project appears, it will often trigger a heated market hype, driving many related sectors to rise. The wealth effect forms a strong attraction, and more people participate in it to further drive more applications to land. Based on these unique advantages and potential, AI may be the biggest story theme in the crypto industry in 2025, and others are not on the same level.
5. AI Agent Q1 may usher in a new round of explosion
In the 2025 crypto industry trend outlook released recently by many institutions, they all expressed optimism about the development of the crypto and A| markets, and particularly pointed out that AI Agent-related products will usher in explosive growth in 2025.
The "microclimate" of the crypto AI field relies on the "macro-environment" of the external AI industry. At present, the heat of the external AI field continues to heat up. On December 23, Musk's AI company xAI announced the completion of a $6 billion Series C financing, and its valuation soared directly to $40 billion, once again demonstrating the appeal of AI narratives and its strong ability to attract money.
At the narrative level, looking back, the explosion of the crypto AI sector is inseparable from the strong stimulation of AI events of external technology giants. In February last year, OpenAl released the large model Sora, which set off a disruptive change in the field of AI and greatly promoted the surge in the price of Worldcoin. In less than a month, the price increased by 5 times, and the FDV exceeded 110 billion US dollars, which in turn led to the strong growth of the entire crypto AI asset sector. Then, in March, Nvidia’s annual GTC conference released a blockbuster AI chip, which triggered a hype of GPU chips. The prices of corresponding concept projects in the crypto market soared, and many new projects emerged.
Currently, OpenAI is at a critical stage of transformation to a general artificial intelligence AI Agent, and plans to launch a new AI Agent product, "Operator", in January 2025. It is reported that the product can automatically perform a series of complex operations such as writing code, travel booking, and e-commerce shopping. It is expected that this product will ignite the enthusiasm of the AI market again, just like Sora in early 2024. In addition, NVIDIA's annual AI Summit will also be held in March. It is expected that a number of blockbuster new products will be released at the conference, bringing new focus to the encryption and AI markets and triggering a new round of hype for related concept projects.
The rapid iteration of external AI technology and the continued maturity of the crypto market have jointly promoted AI Agent to become the most promising subject in the crypto industry. Driven by both narrative appeal and practical value, AI Agent has transformed from a product of short-term speculation to the core force of a diversified ecosystem. Standing at the forefront of the industry, with the access of more and more tracks such as DeFi and GameFi, it will not only release potential in a broader scenario, but also inject new growth momentum into the entire industry.
