AI agent sector suffers 44% market cap wipeout

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe .

If you count the launch of GOAT as the birthdate of the AI agent meta, then this subsector is about three months old. Over this short span, the AI agent market has ballooned to a $20 billion market cap with relatively few tier-1 CEX listings.

That’s nuts, especially since AI agents are still predicated on promised — rather than current — utility.

It’s perhaps unsurprising then that the agent market corrected sharply over the weekend, showing a 43.5% drawdown to $11.3 billion since its Jan. 6 top.

Source: cookie.fun

The top AI agent tokens haven’t been spared the guillotine. In the last seven days, the largest three AI agent tokens by marketcap — VIRTUAL, AI16Z and FARTCOIN, are down 46%, 52%, and 42%, respectively.

AIXBT, the fifth-largest agent token, showed the greatest resilience, with a drawdown of 28%.

It’s a bloodbath. So what? Expect agents to continue dominating 2025 .

Crypto’s obsession with AI is undeniable at this point. It’s riding the hottest tech sector of the decade and still dominates Twitter sentiment among rabid casino speculators. 

Source: Kaito

The billion dollar question then is: How high can the AI agent market go?

At $11.3 billion, AI agent tokens make up about 0.34% of the total crypto market cap today.

If we assume a 40% growth of the total crypto market cap to $5 trillion, and AI coins take a 5% slice of that pie (DeFi dominance peaked at 7.69% in 2022), then you can expect $250 billion as a bull case, says kel.xyz .

Less bullish estimates by David Nage of Arca fund projects a range of $93 billion to $170 billion.

With this framework in mind, the “safe” bet is to hold the ecosystem majors of the AI meta: VIRTUAL, AI16Z and ZEREBRO… right?

The problem is these inter-narratives rotate faster than anyone can keep up with. There’s hardly any guarantee that the “blue chip” agent coins today maintain their dominance over months, or even weeks from now.

In the span of a year, the story of “why AI crypto” went from a beta play on Nvidia and OpenAI to AI memecoins, to AI agents, to AI agent frameworks, AI investment DAOs and AI agent swarms .

As of last week, the most recent chapter in this tale is “ DeFAI ,” i.e., DeFi + AI. I interpret this as an insistence that “AI has real utility, look to its DeFi use cases!”

I’m reminded of a tweet from Daily Ape’s founder Darren Lau. If you’d made the bold bet that AI would sweep crypto markets and scoop up a bag of major AI tokens like TAO, RNDR and AKASH in early 2024, you’d still be sitting on a loss year to date.

Winning at the AI agent meta then requires one to pick the right players in an ever-changing playbook of questionable utility. Is it any wonder crypto traders get rekt?

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter .

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter .

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.