The intersection of the worlds of artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency is leading to some intriguing new investment opportunities for 2025, including a few that could potentially become billion-dollar opportunities.
Currently, the one investment opportunity that has everyone’s attention involves AI agents. Broadly speaking, these AI agents are similar to the ones being launched by major tech companies, but with a crypto and blockchain twist. Let’s take a closer look at what they are, and how to invest in them.
What are AI agents?
AI agents are the next step in the evolution of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. They are trained on large data sets, and are typically designed to perform specific online tasks that are either too difficult or too time-consuming for humans. In some cases, they take on personalities of their own.
But unlike standard AI chatbots, they are designed to act autonomously, based on information and knowledge they have acquired after being created. In other words, you don't need to constantly prompt the AI agent to do something -- it will figure out a way to do it by itself.
Importantly, blockchain technology gives these AI agents a way to make financial transactions on the behalf of others, even without directly being prompted. Once these AI agents have access to a blockchain wallet, they can buy and sell crypto to perform certain tasks or achieve certain goals, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Image source: Getty Images.
Within the crypto market, the AI agent investment opportunity first gained momentum in July 2024, when a semi-autonomous AI agent called Truth Terminal attracted the attention of billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. After interacting with the AI agent via social media, Andreessen helped it to acquire a blockchain wallet, and then gifted $50,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC -0.83%) to it, just to see what would happen next.
The result was the creation of an entirely new meme coin on the Solana (SOL -4.22%) blockchain. In a matter of weeks, this meme coin soared to a nearly $1 billion valuation, thanks in large part to its promotion by the AI agent via social media.
So many people were following Truth Terminal on social media, to see what it would do next, that it was perhaps inevitable that they would also invest in the meme coin launched by this AI agent. Truth Terminal is now acknowledged to be the first-ever millionaire bot, thanks to its large holdings of meme coins.
Ways to play the AI agent opportunity
Investors have three primary opportunities when it comes to AI agents. They can invest in the different platforms being used to create these AI agents. They can invest in the thousands of different AI agents being created on those platforms. Or, they can invest in the meme coins being created and promoted by these AI agents.
To understand better how all three of these opportunities are related, consider the astonishing rise of Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL -15.79%). This is generally acknowledged to be the top platform for creating and launching AI agents. Virtuals Protocol went live in August, and by the end of December, had a market cap of nearly $5 billion.
A big reason for that is the sheer number of AI agents that have been created using this Virtuals platform. The most valuable of them is an AI agent, currently valued at $444 million, which monitors all the discussions taking place across "Crypto Twitter" in order to see what the highest momentum meme coins are at any point in time.
The agentic future of crypto
It will be interesting to see how the agentic future being promoted by the giants of the tech world plays out in the world of cryptocurrency. One year ago, in her "Big Ideas 2024" report, Cathie Wood of Ark Invest outlined a world in which the intersection of AI and blockchain technology had the opportunity to unlock tens of billions of dollars of value.
That now appears to be happening. We’re now seeing AI bots become millionaires by buying and selling meme coins. We’re seeing obscure AI-backed meme coins soar to $1 billion valuations seemingly overnight. And we’re seeing AI agents being valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Does this new AI agent trend have staying power? Or will it be similar to the non-fungible token (NFT) craze of the previous crypto boom, when investors were willing to pay millions of dollars for digital images of cartoon-like avatars, only to see the value of those NFTs crash in value?
Certainly, AI agents have the potential to be a billion-dollar investment opportunity. But just be aware that the area is still very new, and is still highly speculative. So do your due diligence before investing in any AI agent platform, or in any of the thousands of new AI agents being created. The last thing you want to happen is to be hustled out of your money by a sweet-talking AI bot.