AI Agent Tokens Skyrocket as Franklin Templeton Highlights ‘Significant Promise’

Artificial intelligence cryptocurrencies continue to make significant gains, just as asset manager Franklin Templeton highlights how big AI and crypto can be together.

Franklin Templeton said in a note on Tuesday that the interaction of AI agents on blockchains is “very exciting.” And it noticed the current buzz around AI16z and the Virtual protocol– two tokens that have made one of the biggest gains in the last 24 hours among the top 100 coins ranked by market capitalization.

AI16z is an investment DAO run by AI agents. Coin gecko Data shows that the native token has risen more than 18% in the past day (after a slowdown last week) and is now trading hands at $1.30. It briefly fell out of the top 100 on Monday, but has recovered and returned to such a valuable business.

The largest crypto exchange in the world, Binance, announced earlier this month that it would launch perpetual futures contracts for AI16z. However, even with today’s rise, AI16z is down 32% over the past week and is 47% lower than its all-time high price of $2.47 set less than two weeks ago.

And VIRTUAL from Virtuals Protocol, a token launched on Ethereum layer-2 network Base last year – is up 15% in the past day. It now costs $2.98. Virtuals is being used to launch a variety of AI agents, including AiXBT – a token that nearly matched its own all-time high price on Tuesday.

Both tokens had slowed their rallies in recent days after a red-hot start to the year, but are making a comeback as the broader crypto market rebounds on Tuesday.

AI agent software programs are designed to assist humans by completing tasks themselves. As the hype around AI has grown, many in the field have made big promises about the extent to which such tools will help people complete tasks. And some of these agents have their own tokens, adding potential utility and speculation to the equation.

Franklin Templeton added that even if AI agents still have a long way to go to be as refined and useful as they are imagined, the sector shows promise.

“While these actors are not yet fully autonomous and are of little use in their current state, this emerging sector may hold great promise and is worth keeping a close eye on as it develops and matures,” said the note.

Edited by Andrew Hayward