Summary
- Venice (VVV) reached a new all-time high of $34.51 on September 21.
- The token has increased by approximately 17% in just one day and over 3,500% since hitting a low of $0.92 last December.
- VVV serves as the access token for Venice AI, a privacy-centric chatbot created by Erik Voorhees of ShapeShift, and is now the third-largest AI cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
The Venice AI platform's native token, VVV, has recently achieved a record high of $34.51, showing no signs of a slowdown.
In just the past 24 hours, VVV has surged around 17% and has skyrocketed nearly 3,000% since it bottomed out at $0.92 last December. Its market capitalization is now approximately $1.6 billion, positioning it as the third-largest cryptocurrency focused on AI, following Near and Tao.
VVV is not intended for everyday purchases; instead, it functions as an access key for Venice AI, a chatbot and image generation tool developed by Erik Voorhees, a prominent figure in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space and founder of ShapeShift.
Unlike ChatGPT, which charges users per prompt, Venice allows users to stake VVV—essentially locking it in a smart contract—to receive a daily share of the platform’s computational work, which refers to the processing tasks an AI model performs to generate responses.
While users can also pay with fiat currency for their private inference plan, staking VVV is the more engaging option.
Staking VVV as a Subscription Alternative
There’s another token involved called DIEM. When users lock their staked VVV, Venice mints DIEM, which grants holders a dollar's worth of API credit daily, indefinitely. This unique financial structure—part subscription, part perpetuity—links the token’s value to actual platform usage rather than mere speculation.
A portion of Venice's revenue is also used to buy back VVV from the market and permanently remove it from circulation, effectively reducing the supply over time.
This utility token has a clear, practical application at present. Unlike most mainstream chatbots that temporarily store user inputs to enhance their models and prevent abuse, Venice claims to retain no logs, requires no account setup, and avoids content filters that restrict certain inquiries. This feature is either a significant privacy advantage or a potential concern, depending on one’s perspective, but it is the core reason Venice and its token VVV exist as a business.
Recent Surge and Associated Risks
Earlier this month, a public disagreement erupted between an NYU mathematician and OpenAI regarding credit for a fluid-dynamics proof. Although neither party accused the other of misusing private conversations, the debate raised a troubling question that quickly circulated on X and Hacker News: Could a company that analyzes user prompts ultimately incorporate those ideas into a competitor's research?
Venice’s proposition is that its platform makes such situations impossible, reassuring users that their ideas will not be leaked after engaging with Venice.
As a result of this speculation, VVV rose by 34% in a single day and has continued to climb since then.
In addition to speculation, Venice announced in August that it achieved an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $100 million, up from $70 million just a month earlier. In July, the company secured $65 million in a Series A funding round led by crypto investment firm Dragonfly, reaching a valuation of $1 billion—its first external capital since its launch in 2024.
Annual token issuance has been consistently reduced, from an initial 14 million VVV per year at launch down to 2.5 million as of September 1, with plans to decrease it further to 2 million by October.
However, this does not necessarily position Venice as the leading AI service provider. It does not develop its own advanced AI model; instead, it directs prompts to open-source systems like Llama and DeepSeek, which generally lag behind the top models from OpenAI and Google in public assessments.
What Venice offers is privacy. However, the token does come with a cautionary note: market data reveals that approximately 98% of VVV's supply is controlled by the top 100 wallets, suggesting that a small number of holders have the capacity to significantly influence the token's price more than a surge in retail buying could.
Venice's annual emissions are set to decrease once more on October 1, from 2.5 million to 2 million VVV per year, marking another phase in the supply reduction that traders are closely monitoring.