Whales shift to AI16Z and SWARMS as AI agent market continues to heat up

AI agent tokens keep heating up, as whales roll over to make the most of each trend. The recent shift moves funds from ZEREBRO to AI16Z and SWARMS. 

AI agent tokens are attracting whale activity, as funds are shifting to the hottest trending assets. The AI trend brought the entire market to a new peak, valued above $17.25B. The AI space is the leader for short-term hype, also leading to fast trades for locking in profits. 

The current AI rollover resembles the time of meme tokens, where whale wallets shifted to the best-performing assets. However, the AI agent space is relatively small compared to other token classes, potentially expecting much higher valuations if the trend persists. The AI agent trend may repeat the 2021 Web3, NFT and gaming hype, this time around with AI content, tokens, and agent creation tools.

Whales shift to AI agent platforms

One of the recent whale traders is an early buyer of AI tokens. It took the whale some months before going for ZEREBRO, one of the hottest AI tokens at the end of 2024. Recently, the wallet shed the ZEREBRO holdings, switching to AI16Z. 

The whale liquidated $3.25M worth of ZEREBRO, to buy 1.45M AI16Z at $2.23. Since then, AI16Z backtracked to $2.18, valuing the holdings at $4.38M. The whale accumulated a total of over 2M AI16Z, potentially expecting additional price expansion.

AI16Z gained popularity as an AI creation platform, while ZEREBRO chose the path of content creation. Since AI launch platforms are the stronger trend, some whales may shift to the more promising tokens. AI16Z also has a first-mover advantage. Additionally, ZEREBRO is held by more influential top 10 whales, while AI16Z shows a wider distribution.

AI16Z also has the signs of being a meme cult, with a higher number of wallets holding over $1,000 in tokens. This metric shows ‘skin in the game’ by retail owners, and singles out tokens where cabals and insiders are not that influential. AI16Z has 20,610 holders with over $1,000 in their wallets, surpassing even the FARTCOIN cult.

Buyers move into Swarms (SWARMS)

Swarms (SWARMS) is one of the hottest tokens, facing the challenges of copycats and mistaken orders. SWARMS added another 55% to its price in the past 24 hours, accelerating the interest of whales. The popularity of Swarms increased after Binance announced its new perpetual futures contract. The token, however, is not guaranteed a spot market, but even the derivative listing will add exposure. 

SWARMS reached an all-time high of $0.60, later dipping to $0.55. The token is still dependent on Raydium for more than 21% of its volumes, and may experience ongoing volatility. However, an inflow of buyers is mostly pushing the price upward. SWARMS remains within the top 5 most active AI agent frameworks, recently expanding its market capitalization above $500M. Most AI agent tokens are still valued under $1B, with the exception of FET as a legacy token, and the leaders, AI16Z and VIRTUAL.

Whales are buying up SWARMS in the past 24 hours. The latest purchase added $2M USDC to buy 3.58M SWARMS from the Meteora market. Other whales sold after the Binance futures listing, taking partial profits, but retaining a large-scale position for future SWARMS price action.

Previously, another wallet took up a dollar-cost averaging strategy to buy 3.39M SWARMS. The buyers are using wallet clusters and actively moving the token. The latest purchases involve both centralized markets and Solana’s Meteora and Raydium DEX. 

The Swarms project is also causing hype among developers, becoming one of the trending GitHub repositories. Swarms takes an innovative approach in AI agent creation, by building a multi-agent LLM framework. The project is also targeting developers, who can create more original AI agents and have them interact among each other. 

Swarms also offers an active marketplace where agents can be offered, creating a market similar to NFTs. The project aims to build a community, where high-quality agents will bring passive rewards to their authors. Swarms marketplace will also add features to track the performance and popularity of agents.