AI-themed cryptocurrencies got a lift on Thursday from excitement around Nvidia and its increasing demand for chips that power artificial intelligence applications.
SingularityNET (AGIX) rose as much as 19%, according to CoinMarketCap, to 29 cents. Cortex (CTXC) rose 6% to 17 cents and Measurable Data Token (MDT) added 6.5% to reach 4 cents a coin. All of these tokens have a market cap of less than $40 million.
Fetch.ai (FET), with a market cap of $195 million, gained nearly 5% to trade at 23 cents.
Meanwhile, most of the rest of the cryptocurrency market, including bitcoin and ether, was flat.
“AI cryptocurrencies” refer to blockchain-based AI projects’ corresponding tokens. For example, Fetch.ai is dedicated to building infrastructure for “smart, autonomous services” in supply chain, finance, travel and more. Cortext aims to be the “first decentralized world computer capable of running AI and AI-powered dApps on the blockchain.”
Crypto traders got a sentiment boost from the rally in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, driven by Nvidia, which issued astounding sales guidance late Wednesday and cited demand for AI capabilities. Its projected sales for the second quarter of its fiscal 2024 were more than 50% above what analysts had expected.
In a certain pocket of the technology world, some market participants have long believed that the wild west of AI can benefit from blockchain technology and potentially be a positive catalyst for the crypto market at large. Specifically, as AI gets smarter and better at manipulating people’s identities on the internet, blockchain technology could potentially help using its ability to deploy digital identity solutions at scale.
That could be a long way down the road, however, as it’s still early days for both technologies.
Bitcoin and ether hovered around the flat line Thursday as investors remained focused on the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations heading into an extended holiday weekend. The minutes from the most recent Federal Reserve meeting, released Wednesday, also showed officials are divided over what the central bank’s next move should be when it comes to interest rate hikes.