ai16z surges over 35% amid L1 launch plans and whale buying

Agentic AI platform ai16z’s native token has rebounded following the project’s plans to launch its own Layer-1 blockchain.

ai16z (AI16Z) rose 38% to an all-time high of $1.77 on Dec. 31, while its market cap jumped from $1.4 billion to over $1.9 billion at the time, according to crypto.news data. The rise was supported by increased trading activity, with daily volume doubling to $330 million in the past day.

Looking at the weekly and monthly charts, the gains were significantly higher at 156% and 383% respectively, making it one of the best-performing assets among the top 100 cryptocurrencies during these periods.

Why did AI16Z rise today?

ai16z’s recent rally was driven by several catalysts; What stood out was its plans to launch an open-source Layer-1 blockchain designed specifically for AI applications, marking a major step in its tokenomics revamp.

Additionally, the project will introduce a token launch pad in the first quarter of 2025, which will become the primary platform for deploying AI projects built on the Eliza framework, the project’s AI operating system.

The launchpad is expected to include features such as launch fees, staking requirements for access, and liquidity pool matchings to add value to the ai16z token. The token will play a dual role, functioning as both a governance token within the DAO and a utility token for platform activities.

Investor sentiment was further boosted by Eliza as developers and contributors became increasingly engaged with the codebase, and in December it surpassed Google Gemini to become the world’s top AI repository on GitHub.

$ai16z/eliza is officially the number one trending repository 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 this December!

We've even surpassed Google Gemini 🔥

The work our community is doing is absolutely incredible, creating a tsunami in the open-source crypto world unlike anything seen since the… pic.twitter.com/v8ZAtZ42SR

— MΔT 🏴‍☠️.eth / partner @ ai16z /🦩 (@M4T_NFT) December 30, 2024

Strong market performance, combined with growing interest in AI representatives, has enabled the AI ​​token to trend on Google and rank high on CoinGecko.

The increased whale accumulation last week also helped extend the rise of the AI ​​cryptocurrency.

According to Lookonchain’s December 31 post

Additionally, another whale purchased 1.19 million AI16Z tokens for 1.65 million USDC at an average price of $1.39 per token.

Some of the big players are already sitting on huge profits. A few weeks ago a separate whale made a profit of $5.66 million after spending 10 million USDC to purchase 13.16 million AI16Z tokens, which later rose to a value of $15.66 million.

Additionally, the demand for ai16z among derivatives traders has also increased greatly in the past day. According to data from CoinGlass, open interest on ai16z’s futures market has increased by a massive 256% to over $22.5 million at the time of writing.

Such a sharp upward move means that investors are quite confident in the potential for the current rally to continue.

According to some market experts, ai16z may surpass other heavy AI technologies such as Virtual Protocol (VIRTUAL). Daniel Cheung, partner at crypto VC Syncracy Capital, predicts that recent developments position ai16z to overtake VIRTUAL as the largest AI brokerage builder by market cap.

At the time of this writing, VIRTUAL’s market cap was $3.68 billion, while ai16z’s market cap was $1.79 billion.