First Mover Americas: AI Mania Heats Up

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Artificial intelligence (AI)-related tokens surged after chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) beat its already lofty fourth-quarter earnings expectations. Nvidia on Wednesday reported earnings per share of $5.16, topping the average analyst estimate of $4.59, according to FactSet data. The chipmaker also posted revenue of $22.1 billion, higher than Wall Street's expectation of $20.4 billion. AI tokens surged: SingularityNet (AGIX) gained 37% on Thursday, FetchAI (FET) added more than 15% and Render (RNDR) rose 20%. The Graph, a protocol for indexing and querying data stored on blockchains, which said it plans to add AI-assisted querying with large language models, saw its token rally 21% after the report. Worldcoin’s WLD jumped 33%. The overall market cap of AI tokens has surpassed $17 billion, according to CoinGecko data.

Ethereum’s native token, ether (ETH), may have found a path to a record high of $5,200 after breaking out an “ascending triangle” price pattern, according to technical analysis by Kraken OTC. ETH, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, topped the $3,000 mark early this week, establishing a foothold above the horizontal trendline connecting August 2022 and April 2023 highs. The trendline, along with the upward-sloping bottom line connecting June 2022 and November 2022 lows, comprised an ascending triangle formation on the weekly price chart. In other words, bulls have pushed through a long-standing resistance, regaining market control after a series of higher lows showing a gradual decline in bears’ strength.

Bitcoin (BTC) may have stalled over the past week, but FundStrat head of research Tom Lee doubled down on his bullish outlook and said the largest cryptocurrency could reach as high as $150,000 this year. "You have demand improving with the new ETFs, you have supply shrinking with the halving, and if monetary policy eases, which we expect, that's supportive for risk assets," Lee told CNBC on Wednesday. Lee's comments came as bitcoin's rally appeared to lose some steam following a 35% gain over the past couple of weeks to $53,000, its highest price in 26 months. BTC was recently changing hands at $50,900, down 1.8% over the past 24 hours, holding up slightly better than the broader-market CoinDesk20 Index's (CD20) 3% decline during the same period.

- Omkar Godbole