AI-Powered Cryptocurrencies Rally, Ethereum Validators Exit, and Crypto Stocks Find Footing

According to Blockworks, AI-powered cryptocurrencies Fetch.ai (FET), Render (RNDR), and SingularityNET (AGIX) have led the market over the past day, with each rallying between 33% and 35%. These tokens power decentralized computing power marketplaces, which gained popularity after ChatGPT made generative AI a household term last year. Memecoins, such as pepe (PEPE), bonk (BONK), dogwifhat (WIF), and shiba inu (SHIB), lost more than 15%, while Bitcoin (BTC) traded flat and ether (ETH) slipped 2.3% to below $3,800. Ethereum has been in focus after Bitcoin briefly hit all-time highs earlier this week. For the first time since late January, more validators exited the Ethereum blockchain than joined, with total ETH staked dropping by over 2% overnight, or more than 670,000 ETH ($2.54 billion). Ethereum's staking APR has risen from below 3.5% to 3.69% since the start of the month. About 40% of all ETH staked (12.16 million ETH worth $46.2 billion) is with liquid staking protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool, up from 10.84 million ETH at the start of the year. In the crypto business sector, stocks found their footing alongside Bitcoin. Bitfury-owned miner Cipher Mining surged over 27% after strong Q4 earnings, while MicroStrategy rallied 18.5% in response to upsizing its convertible debt offering from $600 million to $700 million. MicroStrategy is up more than 100% on its Bitcoin investment to date, with $2.6 billion in liabilities after multiple rounds of corporate bond sales since 2021. Coinbase's common share count has grown 38% since its public debut in April 2021, and its cash pile has increased from $4 billion to $5.71 billion.