Story (IP) up 27% on focus on the AI sector… Expectations also rise for inclusion in U.S. institutional portfolios and an upgrade

Edited 3:42 pm · 2026. 01. 12.Entered 1:38 pm · 2026. 01. 12.

Amid broad gains across artificial intelligence (AI)-related sectors, Story (IP) is extending its rally as expectations build for inclusion in U.S. institutional portfolios, alongside a forthcoming mainnet upgrade.

According to CoinMarketCap on the 12th (Korea time), Story (IP) was trading at $2.53, up 26.93% from the previous day. At the same time, on Upbit’s KRW market it rose 8.8% day-on-day to 3,647 won, ranking third in daily trading volume (95.8 billion won) behind XRP (Ripple·XRP) and Bitcoin (BTC).

A key driver of this rise is first seen as a rebound in investor sentiment toward the broader AI sector. Story is a project that aims to build infrastructure for managing and distributing on-chain the intellectual property (IP) of content and data generated and used by AI, and as the AI-based content industry expands, its status as a theme-driven play is being highlighted.

As AI-related tokens such as Render (Render) and Virtual (Virtual) have posted concurrent gains in the crypto market recently, analysts say demand has also concentrated in Story.

Following the release of its Chapter 2 roadmap last year, Story has focused on real-world data IP used for robotics and multimodal AI (Multi-modal model, AI beyond text such as audio and video). To that end, in the third quarter it launched Poseidon via a subsidiary, targeting the build-out of a data IP infrastructure usable in real industrial settings such as robotics, autonomous driving, and industrial automation—drawing attention from major overseas media including Bloomberg.

Another issue has been the growing spotlight on indirect exposure to the Story ecosystem from traditional finance. According to materials released on the 6th by Grayscale, the largest U.S. crypto asset manager with about 50 trillion won in assets under management, the IP token is said to account for about 5.3% of the portfolio of the Grayscale Decentralized AI Fund that it manages.

The upcoming mainnet upgrade scheduled for the 14th is also seen as a contributing factor. Through this upgrade, the Fusaka upgrade proposals that had recently been discussed on the Ethereum (ETH) network will be applied to the Story network as well.

Technical indicators also point to a strong upward trend. On a CoinMarketCap basis, Story (IP) has broken above both the 30-day moving average ($1.78) and the 7-day moving average ($2.09), while RSI (7) stood at 79.98, nearing overbought territory. MACD also flashed a bullish reversal signal, confirming a buyer-dominant flow. However, after the sharp short-term jump, whether it can hold above $2.57 on a closing basis is being cited as a key variable for trend continuation.