Despite Nvidia's (NVDA) recent conference sparking bullish sentiment among traditional market AI stocks, the artificial intelligence (AI) crypto token has fallen short of its lofty goals for 2024.
Last March, the NEAR token doubled in the lead-up to Nividia’s annual conference, and the rise was reflected across the broader crypto AI market. Fetch.AI (FET), Graph (GRT), and Singularity NET (AGIX) all posted significant gains in line with the conference.
However, this year, vulnerabilities in AI tokens have been exposed. NEAR is down more than 8% in the past 24 hours, while FET is down nearly 9%. In contrast, NVDA started the year trading at $133 and was up 15% to $153 on Monday when the conference started.
There are several reasons why AI tokens are not getting as much attention as they used to. One of these is the emergence of AI agent tokens. AI agent tokens share similarities with meme coins due to their volatile nature and cult-like following. Investors tend to trade these tokens because of the potential for triple-digit and even quadruple-digit returns compared to regular AI tokens. Regular AI tokens are difficult to move due to their large market capitalization. And, like memecoins, AI agent tokens are also likely to experience larger losses.
Another reason is simply a lack of interest. According to Google Search Trends, searches for “NEAR token” and “Fetch.ai” have decreased by 47% and 84%, respectively, since March.
The fall from grace is not surprising, as the crypto market is extremely fickle and tends to punish sectors that rise quickly with their speculative nature. Last year's bull market was exactly like this. People invested in the AI token believing it would be the main story in the crypto bull market, but instead Bitcoin stole the show with tens of billions of dollars in ETF inflows and bullish mood around Donald Trump. President Trump's victory.
However, AI tokens are still in their infancy. Few crypto AI projects were in mainstream use, as many of the products were still being built. Meanwhile, Nvidia announced a $3,000 mini supercomputer called Digits, which will be available for purchase in May.
