The AI coin crypto sector sits at $24-25 billion, with a total crypto market of approximately $2.86 trillion. Anthropic reportedly raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May, and Nvidia posted $96.2 billion in quarterly revenue in July, up 106% year over year, yet most major AI-related tokens remain 70%-90% below their 2024-2025 highs.

AI Crypto Category, Coingecko

Does AI growth create direct demand for tokens, or does it primarily enrich the companies building chips, cloud infrastructure, models, and enterprise software?

The pattern already showing up in stablecoin rails is instructive. Large AI-agent payment volumes have not yet clearly translated into demand for Solana or other…