As Asia opens for trading, bitcoin has still held past the $30K mark at $30,323, flat over the past 24 hours, according to market data, said Shaun Fernando, Chief Risk Officer at Deribit. Ether, meanwhile, is trading at $1,860, down 1.3%.
For investors and others touching the technology world, AI is the latest shiny object. But critics of the digital assets industry say it’s buzzword-laden and unsustainable, always chasing the next new trend without much thought to its sustainability. And for the most part, they are right.
Venture capitalists, seemingly bored of blockchain and crypto, have found a new interest in AI. PitchBook data shows that venture capital funding for crypto is down 80% in the first quarter of 2023, from $12.3 billion to $2.4 billion. PitchBook’s data also shows that AI startups raised $1.6 billion this quarter, and another $10 billion in deals have been announced but have yet to close.
For all the hype the AI bulls have for the technology, after putting it through its paces, AI is still somewhere between the peak of inflated expectations and trough of disillusionment on a hype cycle. It’s slow, expensive, and 15-20% of what comes out of ChatGPT’s artificial mouth is a hallucination.
Even at the height of blockchain mania, the prelude to the Covid bull market, there wasn’t the same fervor as there is with AI. One would think that given the disappointment of the enterprise blockchain bubble bursting, stakeholders would have learned their lesson about enthusiastically embracing new technology.