Grayscale, a leading digital asset manager, is introducing a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Crypto Sector. The sector will feature 20 altcoins focused on AI development and usage. The AI crypto sector will be the sixth category in Grayscale’s crypto sector classification framework.
Other categories in Grayscale’s crypto sector include Currencies, Smart Contract Platforms, Financials, Consumer and Culture, and Utilities and Services. Grayscale views the addition of the new AI Crypto Sector as a significant addition due to the growing demand for decentralized AI tools.
Understanding Grayscale’s New AI Sector
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking up the center stage across the world, emerging as the most powerful technology in the 21st century. And with AI becoming an integral part in today’s day-to-day activities, Grayscale sees huge potential for AI focused crypto tokens. Because of this, the digital asset manager decided to introduce the AI sector as the sixth category under its crypto framework.
According to the official announcement made on May 27, Grayscale’s Crypto AI sector will feature 20 altcoins focused on the development and usage of AI tools. “Today we are introducing the Artificial Intelligence Crypto Sector, which will include the protocols for which AI applications are the primary use case,” Grayscale wrote.
Grayscale also confirmed that the AI Crypto Sector will have three subcategories. These sub-sectors are categorized as AI Platforms, AI Tools & Resources, and AI Apps & Agents.
Topping Grayscale’s AI Crypto sector tokens will be Bittensor (TAO). This token has the largest market cap with a total market cap of $3.8 billion. The token previously fell under the utilities and services sector before Grayscale transitioned it into the new AI Crypto sector.
Other AI tokens in this sector include; Near (NEAR), Render (RNDR), Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET), Virtuals (VIRTUAL), and Worldcoin (WLD), as well as 13 others. This pushes the list to a total of 20 altcoins. The combined market cap for these tokens is approximately $21 billion.
AI Crypto Sector Market Growth and Forecast
As per Grayscale, in Q1 2023 the total value of the tokens under its AI Crypto Sector was $4.5 billion. These tokens are now worth $21 billion, having jumped fourfold. Such a sharp rise proves that more people are interested in AI focused crypto projects. The firm believes that the incoming halving of the Bittensor project and innovations around distributed training could fuel further growth across the sector.
The firm also believes that stablecoin use by AI agents and finding sustainable revenue models are important areas to keep an eye on. These factors may reshape the AI Crypto Sector’s from what it is today. Grayscale also underlined that decentralized AI systems should be used to tackle the problems such as bias, censorship and transparency concerns, brought about by centralized AI models.
“Grayscale Research believes that decentralized AI technologies have the potential to bring important decisions regarding AI development out from walled gardens and into public ownership,” the firm wrote.
Blockchain will address these problems by providing an open and widely available infrastructure for AI apps. Joining these fields together would allow the use of AI resources by everyone while addressing public needs.
