ASC AI Index - The Market’s Leading Index of AI tokens, May 2025 Results
By Wes Levitt, CFA
ASC AI Index (AAI) tracks the price performance of the top tokens in the AI sector, using a rules-based criteria designed to reflect the landscape of AI tokens. The index includes the top 30 tokens that meet the minimum criteria of market capitalization, daily trading volume, and quality of exchange venues.
May 2025 Results
ASC AI Index returned 1.8% in May, as the crypto AI sector’s performance was mixed with some tokens performing strongly and others struggling. Bittensor was a standout with a 21% gain, driven by anticipation of its upcoming halving event, mirroring Bitcoin's supply schedule, as well as expansion of AI subnets and growing institutional interest. Render fell by 13% however, without negative news but seemingly driven by technical correction factors. Overall, the sector was perhaps not top of investors’ minds as the broader market moves drove attention to crypto mega-caps like BTC and ETH. Given that NVDA gained 25% in May and the AI sector is still rapidly developing, crypto AI may be primed for a rotation from BTC/ETH in the coming months.
In May the broader cryptocurrency market experienced significant developments, marked by record highs, regulatory shifts, and increased institutional participation. Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $112,509.65 mid-month, driven by institutional inflows, favorable U.S. regulatory developments, and the establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve by the U.S. government. Ethereum also broke its long losing streak with a 41% gain after its successful ‘Pectra’ upgrade which enhanced scalability and staking capabilities. The top-end of crypto assets was also supported by Coinbase joining the S&P 500.
In the May end of month rebalance, 2 new constituents were added: SQD (SQD), a data lake for AI agents that claims to be the first emergent and open database network, and Solidus AI Tech (AITECH), a previous constituent that offers a GPU marketplace. With the addition of these 2 new constituents, Nosana (NOS) and Artificial Liquid Intelligence (ALI) drop out of the index as the lowest-market cap constituents.
Index Construction and Rebalancing Methodology
ASC use the following criteria for the index’s token selection process:
Market Capitalization - AAI requires a minimum token market capitalization of $20 million for inclusion in the index, based on a token’s average market cap over the prior 30 days. This ensures that the index captures the most important and representative tokens of the sector, while excluding tokens with such low market caps that they can be easily manipulated.
Presence on Tier 1 or Tier 2 Exchanges - The index only includes tokens that are trading on at least one Tier 1 or Tier 2 exchange, since less reputable exchanges often engage in wash-trading in order to boost the apparent volume. This ensures the index is only tracking tokens with legitimate price discovery that reflects actual trading in the sector. For the purpose of this index, Tier 1 or Tier 2 exchanges are defined as centralized exchanges Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, OKX, ByBit, Kucoin, and Gate.io, as well as DEXes Uniswap, Jupiter, Orca, PancakeSwap, Trader Joe, Raydium, and other primary DEXes of L1 ecosystems. The list of exchanges will be reevaluated quarterly given the fast-changing nature of the crypto exchange landscape, particularly on the DEX side.
Trading Volume - The threshold for inclusion in the index is an average daily trading volume of at least $500k over the prior 30 days, with a majority of volume coming from Tier 1 or Tier 2 exchanges.
Project Focus - The protocol or platform should have a majority of its transaction volume or other usage in AI-related use cases, or in the absence of a live product or measurable usage metrics, the core focus and mission of the project must be related to AI.
The index value was set at 100 at the time of its launch on January 1, 2024. The index is rebalanced monthly based on the initial selection criteria of market cap, trade volume, and exchange listings. There are no caps or floors to asset weights, as the index is intended to reflect the sector makeup accurately even when it is dominated by a small number of tokens. If more than 30 tokens meet all of the index criteria for a given month’s rebalance, then only the top 30 tokens by market capitalization will be included.
*The ASC AI Index available on Upwealth is a representative subset of the full AI Index due to asset restrictions on Upwealth. Performance may vary from the full ASC AI Index described here.
Wes Levitt, CFA, is the Chief Investment Officer and General Partner at Alpha Transform Holdings, a digital asset investment firm focused on blockchain and Web3 innovation. In his role, he oversees portfolio strategy for both the Alpha Transform Blockchain/Web3 Fund and the Alpha Liquid Fund, which specializes in liquid digital assets.
Prior to joining Alpha Transform Holdings, Levitt served as Head of Strategy at Theta Labs, a decentralized blockchain cloud platform for AI, media, and entertainment. He also held positions as Chief Financial Officer at Blockchain Moon Acquisition Corp and as a Senior Investment Associate at Mosser Capital Management, where he focused on real estate equity and securitized debt. Follow Levitt on X and LinkedIn.
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