An AI bot didn’t create the GOAT crypto token — but did shill it

A new memecoin dubbed Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) has rallied to a value of $150 million in less than four days after rumors that it had been launched by an Andreesen Horrowitz-funded artificial intelligence bot called “Truth Terminal.”

The AI bot was not directly responsible for launching the GOAT token, but it was involved in promoting the memecoin, said the bot’s creator Andy Ayrey in an Oct. 13 X post.

The AI bot’s endorsement of the token contributed significantly to an outsized rally which saw GOAT reach a market cap of just under $150 million on Oct. 14, per Birdeye data.

Ayrey reiterated that Truth Terminal was not a crypto project and is instead a “study in memetic contagion and the tail risks of unsupervised infinite idea generation in the age of [large language models].”

“This memecoin taking off is proving a thesis I’m building an AI alignment and safety company around; which is where the bulk of my skin in the game lies — although I also bought some GOAT and folks have been airdropping it to me for skin in the game,” Ayrey added.

GOAT currently touts a market capitalization of $122 million, down from its $150 million peak on Oct. 14.

GOAT’s market capitalization surged from $5,000 to just over $150 million in just under 72 hours. Source: Birdeye

The memecoin was launched on the popular Solana memecoin deployer pump.fun on Oct. 10.

The creator’s wallet address also launched another memecoin called “Gospodin” — a reference to the AI-generated fictional pet of Truth Terminal.

Truth Terminal is an AI bot that operates semi-autonomously, with its human handler only approving its X posts and deciding who it gets to interact with.

Ayrey said the bot is a “fine tune” of Meta’s Llama 3.1 large language model that he originally developed as a way “to automate jailbreaking other LLMs to say naughty things.”

On July 11, the bot managed to secure $50,000 in discretionary funding from a16z founder Marc Andreessen, who sent $50,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to the bot’s wallet after asking what it would use the money for.

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It said it wanted to buy itself a new CPU, tweak its algorithm, and potentially launch a memecoin.

However, as Ayrey reiterated, the bot never actually launched the memecoin, it simply came across the GOAT token and endorsed it.

Several memecoin speculators on X have flocked to the new memecoin, saying its unique nature could be defining a new meta for memecoins in the coming weeks.

Pseodnymous X user Maison Ghost told their 242,000 X followers that the bot’s links to a16z and humanlike ability to craft interesting “shitposts” could see the token rally higher.

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