What’s Next For Injective (INJ ) Price After A 60% Weekly Surge?

Injective (INJ), the native crypto asset of its namesake’s layer-1 blockchain, has had a bumper year. The token hit a lifetime high of $39.88 on Tuesday — a staggering 3000% surge in the last 12 months.

At the time of writing, the token changed hands at $38.63 – that’s a 59.23% jump in the last seven days alone. Coingape had earlier predicted that INJ prices would likely shoot past the $ 30 mark.

What’s behind this rally?

The upswing can be partially attributed to the social media hype around the Injective Protocol, an AI-powered interoperable blockchain designed for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. INJ has become the talk of the town recently, emerging as the most discussed token on social media platforms in the last seven days.

According to data provided by AlphaScan, INJ leapfrogged Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, in terms of popularity on social media during this period.

AI Emerges as a Game Changer

The emergence of AI as the shiny new tech toy also seems to be backing the rally in INJ prices. With AI-driven projects soaring in popularity — consider the meteoric rise of OpenAI’s ChaGPT and Google’s Bard slowly but steadily stepping on the growth pedal — investor sentiment around AI-powered tokens in the crypto space also seems to be more positive.

The surge in INJ prices is also in line with the broader bullish crypto market sentiment, according to an analysis by crypto tracking platform CoinCodex. Injective is currently ranked 26th of all cryptocurrencies with a total market capitalization of approximately $3.4 billion, up nearly 5.4% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

The recent rally can also be credited to the so-called airdrop farmers, who’ve picked up steam in the past year, in hopes of acquiring as many freshly-minted tokens as possible. A social media user recently explained on X (formerly Twitter) how several “projects built on top of Injective have confirmed an airdrop.”

INJ Price Prediction: Here’s Where INJ May Head Next

At present, the cumulative market cap of top AI and big data tokens stands at around $20.15 billion, with investors and traders anticipating a wider rally, given the growing demand for AI and its functionality.

Additionally, the global AI market size is estimated to grow 37% every year from 2023 to 2030, as per a December 11, 2023 report by Forbes. This could be a good omen for INJ, especially considering the token’s overall market performance throughout 2023.