February 4, 2025
A recent report by Sygnum Bank suggests that AI agents, while popular, remain highly speculative. Despite these challenges, the sector remains promising, and projects with real utility may lead future AI-driven crypto advancements. Utility Over Hype In its quarterly outlook, the Swiss crypto bank noted growing interest in AI-driven crypto initiatives, particularly AI agents. Despite their traction, these agents have yet to prove their value beyond speculation. Meanwhile, infrastructure projects like Bittensor (TAO), the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET), and Phala Network are tackling more practical challenges by integrating AI with decentralized applications (dApps). Widespread Adoption In any case, AI agent tokens have grown rapidly over the last few years, with their total market cap surpassing $15 billion by Q4 2024. Agentic AI, which automates decision-making, is a key driver behind this growth and is valuable in areas like trading, social media, and DeFi. Industry leaders like Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg predict that AI agents will become entirely mainstream by the end of 2025. However, Sygnum cautioned that these agents are still vulnerable to external factors, such as cheaper AI technologies like DeepSeek , which recently triggered a U.S. stock market crash.
