Crypto and artificial intelligence – The Cryptonomist

There are several crypto projects that are directly related to artificial intelligence. 

Typically these are tokens or cryptocurrencies from ecosystems that harness the so-called “AI” in some way, but since there are so many of them there is a concern that some of these projects use artificial intelligence mainly as a buzzword to generate conversation about them. 

The best crypto projects leveraging artificial intelligence

For example, as many as 128 cryptocurrencies, or tokens, related to AI or so-called Big Data are listed on CoinMarketCap, but only four are those that are also known to the general public. 

It is also worth noting that none of these 128 cryptocurrencies has a market capitalization of more than $1 billion, and only the top four exceed $200 million. 

GRT (The Graph)

The one with the highest capitalization (more than $800 million) is GRT, which is The Graph’s token on Ethereum. 

It is not an artificial intelligence project, but related to big data. It is also an indexing protocol for requesting data from networks such as Ethereum and IPFS, which is already used in several DeFi applications. 

It is worth mentioning since it is clearly the main project in this category, not only on CoinMarketCap, although it should not be confused with the actual AI projects. Moreover, as it is already in use, it is well understood why it has such a higher market capitalization than the other projects in this category. 

It is important to keep in mind that very often artificial intelligence is based on big data, particularly for what is called machine learning, or deep learning.

In addition, the second token in this category, OCEAN by Ocean Protocol, also does not deal with an artificial intelligence project in the strict sense, but with big data. 

Fetch.ai (FET)

The most important crypto project of true artificial intelligence is Fetch.ai. Not surprisingly, its native cryptocurrency, FET, is the third by market capitalization in this category, as well as the first among those directly linked to AI projects. 

Fetch AI is a platform that enables collective learning of IoT (Internet of Things) devices and algorithms. It is a project launched back in 2017, and is based in Cambridge, UK.

The idea is to provide smart contracts to implement machine learning solutions for decentralized problem solving using artificial intelligence.

The FET cryptocurrency is nothing more than the native currency of this decentralized smart contract-based ecosystem. 

It capitalizes just over $200 million, but over the years it has been talked about several times due to its performance in the crypto markets. 

It debuted on the crypto markets in 2019 at a price of $0.4, but that quickly proved to be exaggerated. Indeed, by December 2020, before the last big bull run began, it had fallen nearly tenfold. 

Thanks to the 2021 speculative bubble, however, it sprang first to $0.8 in March, then to $1.2 in September. At that point, it had marked +200% from the initial placement price, but +3,000% from the pre-bubble price. 

Since this is a cryptocurrency in use within an ecosystem that uses artificial intelligence, such a boom had seemed strange, and in fact in 2022 its price collapsed back to below $0.06 in November. Thus 2022 nearly wiped out all the gains it had accumulated in 2021, bringing the price to -85% from its initial price in 2019. 

Since then, however, it has recovered a bit, as it has almost climbed back up to $0.29. Yet it still remains lower than the listing price. 

SingularityNET (AGIX)

The other major cryptocurrency related to artificial intelligence is AGIX, which is the token on Ethereum from the SingularityNET project. 

Its market capitalization is similar to that of FET, but it has a very different history. 

SingularityNET is a blockchain-based marketplace that allows anyone to monetize artificial intelligence services. The problem is that five years after the token was launched, there are still only 75 services on the marketplace. 

The initial placement price on the 2018 crypto markets was $1.5, which is hugely higher than what the market has since priced the token at. 

In fact, during 2020 it had fallen below $0.02, and by the time the last major bull run started it was still below $0.05. 

During 2021, the price managed to rise back above $0.5 twice, which is tenfold from December 2020, but in 2022 it again plunged below $0.04. So the 2022 low was below the 2020 high, and the current price is 90% lower than the initial price in 2018. 

It is therefore a project that is struggling to take off, perhaps because it is too far ahead of its time. 

The boom in artificial intelligence

Although artificial intelligence has now been in use for decades, it was not until 2023 that there began to be a real popular boom. Previously it was confined to real technical niches totally beyond the reach of the ordinary user, who simply used artificial intelligence without knowing what it was or how it worked. 

It is therefore possible both that the most successful AI-related crypto projects have yet to emerge, and that some of those that have already launched but are struggling to get off the ground will sooner or later achieve great success. 

In addition, one must distinguish between artificial intelligence crypto projects that have their own cryptocurrency, or their own token, and AI projects that were to use an existing cryptocurrency instead. 

The data currently coming in from the crypto markets reveal that there has not yet been any AI crypto project that has been able to blossom and make big numbers, and that perhaps it is still too early to expect anything major to happen in the short term anyway. 

In part because it is difficult for an AI project to really be decentralized, as it requires huge investments and someone capable of leveraging them. 

The real big advantage of cryptocurrencies and crypto ecosystems is precisely decentralization, something that is a poor fit, for example, with for-profit corporate initiatives whose goal is to cash in.