AI Agent is the only narrative to grow strongly by the end of 2024

In the final weeks of 2024 (from December 10-31, 2024), the cryptocurrency market sank into the red, as BTC saw a downward correction of about 7%, from $100,000 to over $93,000 on December 31, 2024.

This correction has led to a strong bearish wave across most altcoins, with many tokens registering declines of 20% or more, such as AAVE, ONDO, XRP, etc. In particular, some of the new memencoins listed on Binance, such as ACT and PNUT suffered deep losses of nearly 50%.

However, despite the gloomy market, one segment is going against the general trend, namely AI Agent itself. From December 10-31, 2024, major AI projects (including ai16z, aixbt, virtuals) recorded impressive growth, reaching nearly 200%, striking out amid a declining panorama.

The growth momentum of AI Agent projects (ai16z, aixbt, virtuals) comes from several notable factors:

• Aixbt has quickly become one of the most notable AI agents recently, taking the top spot on the list of most noticed projects over the past 30 days. This is thanks to the innovative strategy of using the "@aixbt_agent" tag model to posts on X, which creates lively discussions on a variety of investment topics.

• ai16z has passed the $1 billion mark and is now at $1.5 billion, thanks to information on the launch of the AI Agent launchpad and the construction of a comprehensive infrastructure for AI in Q1 2025. This news, announced on December 28, 2024, spurred the strong growth of the project.
• Virtuals launched GAME Sandbox — a model that helps test AI models before their actual deployment on December 11, 2024. At the same time, continuous updates and developments from sub-projects such as aixbt (Asset Analysis Development Agent), LUNA (KOL livestream development agent, and human content creator for projects) have contributed to the overall development of the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem.

Not only large projects recorded strong growth, but even smaller ones, such as VaderAI by Virtuals (VADER) — the Investment DAO on Base project, and AI Rig Complex (ARC) — the RIG framework in AI Agent, also saw impressive growth of nearly 400% during the same period from December 12 to December 31, 2024.

Despite the strong growth, as of December 31, 2024, the total market capitalization of AI Agent (including Fetch.ai) reached only about $13 billion, ranking it 60th in the entire cryptocurrency market narrative.

The AI market is still small compared to other major segments, such as layer 1 (excluding Bitcoin), DeFi, Memecoin, and DePin, with capitalizations reaching $800 billion, $120 billion, $105 billion, and $31 billion, respectively.

This shows that the growth potential of the AI Agent market remains huge in the future, as AI technologies and applications continue to evolve and attract more and more attention.

This is not the first time the market has seen a wave of strong growth that goes against the general trend. Earlier this year, for example, Solana cat memecoin registered gains of up to thousands of percent, despite the fact that the market has entered a long downtrend since March 2024.

Prominent names such as POPCAT, MEW, MANEKI... have all had remarkable growth. However, at the present time, the value of these memencoins has fallen sharply, from 40% to 60% from the nearest peak.

Narrative AI agents are now witnessing a similar boom. The question is whether this trend really sustains sustainable development in the long term?