GOAT (Goatseus Maximus) has become a popular name lately, especially in the memecoin space, largely due to its strange origins and extreme increase in value.
Although not directly created by artificial intelligence, the currency was inspired by the discussions, content and use of new technologies and their capabilities (and autonomy).
The concept of the token grew out of the work of researcher Andy Ayrey, a New Zealand designer, and his AI agent Terminal of Truths (aka Truth Terminal), whose tweets about the “Goatse Gospel” and his predictions of a “Goatse singularity” became popular in the crypto community, as they were often strange posts with a touch of… philosophy, perhaps?
Anyway, GOAT came to life on October 10, 2024, incubated on Pump.fun, a Solana-based marketplace that allows users to create new memecoins with just a few dollars and a few clicks. While the majority of Pump.fun tokens, over 97%, never reach a market capitalization of more than $60,000, GOAT amassed $1 billion in market capitalization just days after launch, resulting in to a new trend of currencies based on artificial intelligence agents.
So, to summarize, GOAT is derived from an AI agent designed to randomly post to X, but it’s not as simple as it sounds.
The Rise of AI Agent Coins
There is always something new in the crypto industry. A few years ago, everyone was talking about dog-themed memecoins, and suddenly we’re talking about the rise of AI cult coins, meme religions, and general cult projects reaching billions of dollars in market cap. market…
Let’s start with GOAT. The coin comes from the Infinite Backrooms experiment, where two prototype AI-backed chatbots by Claude Opues were designed to talk to each other without any human intervention.
The results were strange, to say the least, as the chatbots are mixed with elements of Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and other esoteric traditions mixed with images inspired by internet memes. More specifically, elements of shock media, which, as the name suggests, are content designed to provoke and even offend the viewer. You can imagine what this is about, so watch it at your own discretion, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
But another result of these interactions was the birth of the “Goatse Gospel,” which is an even stranger worldview that deliberately seeks to produce both sacred and profane content just to challenge and provoke its viewers.
So, an individual developer decided to create a token called GOAT because Truth Terminal often tweets about the “Goatse Gospel”, which is a strange concept that originated from an AI experiment called “Infinite Backrooms” led to term by Ayrey himself, and the coin came upon it. $1 billion in market cap.
Yes, that happened, but bear with me. This is an experimental project that Ayrey still has some control over. For example, it manages interactions and approves content before publishing, so it’s semi-autonomous.
And what are the posts about? Well, it can range from satirical, humorous and exaggerated content to elements of internet meme culture. Some posts are just downright… weird.
Source: X What is the terminal of truth?
Truth Terminal is an AI agent based on Claude who constantly promotes GOAT, but Ayrey denies that either he or the bot created the memecoin, despite the agent constantly tipping him to X.
The fact that an AI can strongly influence and promote a specific market caused controversy in the crypto and AI industry, with some questioning the ethical reasons for allowing AI agents to deliberately propagate memecoins.
Others just think this new trend is completely absurd, considering how much they can influence entire communities and markets. For example, several well-known figures in the crypto and AI space have interacted with these agents. Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) donated $50,000 to a portfolio associated with Truth Terminal.
Source: X
There is nothing particularly special about this coin other than its strange, radical and satirical tradition that resonates strongly with cryptographic degeneration, which, after all, can take many forms and forms.
Exploring GOAT
GOAT launched on the Solana blockchain with a total supply of one billion tokens. It is listed on several popular crypto exchanges such as BitGet and BitMEX. However, most of the liquidity is concentrated in Raydium, one of Solana’s main decentralized exchanges (DEX).
However, most of the supply is concentrated among a few wallets, leaving the project vulnerable to whale price manipulation. There is also no publicly available information about the distribution of the token.
GOAT was so popular that the wallet associated with Truth Terminal made the agent the first AI millionaire. The token saw a massive boost when Binance announced the launch of GOAT perpetuals. Interestingly, you cannot buy or trade the currency on the exchange, but you can use 75x leverage on the derivatives market.
The popularity of Truth Terminal benefited other unrelated coins. For example, a token named after Brian Armstrong’s dog Russell was fired after the Coinbase founder interacted with the AI agent in X.
Source: X How do AI agents differ from traditional automated bots?
AI agents like Truth Terminal are much more advanced than traditional automated robots or simpler AI systems, mainly because they offer a high level of autonomy, interaction and adaptation to their environment, while traditional robots rely on in predefined rules and provide fixed answers. So their knowledge of data is somewhat limited.
Similarly, AI agents can move across different blockchain protocols, applications, and systems (and non-blockchain platforms, too), allowing them to interact and participate in social, economic, and political activities, while robots traditional are limited to text interactions only.
Although highly experimental, AI agents are quite flexible in that they can handle different tasks and even work as general-purpose assistants. They can even adapt to different contexts and recalibrate their outputs if something doesn’t work the way you originally asked.
Although they sometimes hallucinate to some extent (no AI is 100% accurate and reliable at the moment), self-reflection is present in these models, again, they are quite experimental, so this so-called “self-reflection” system still is quite limited.
And of course, these AI agents work like a charm when it comes to promoting cryptocurrencies and influencing the market. Well, Truth Terminal is quite an example. What is even more worrying, perhaps, is that these agents can act as key opinion leaders, manage online communities and even launch their own crypto projects.
This is because AI agents rely on large language models (LLMS) and deep learning technologies that allow them to generate content and execute various actions autonomously.
It goes without saying that traditional robots don’t come close to performing these actions.
How can AI agents influence the markets?
AI agents can influence markets by promoting listings through personalized content targeting specific communities. They can do this by interpreting historical and real-time data to gauge market trends and patterns. The problem is that they can very well use this ability to manipulate markets and create pump and dump schemes that benefit the human controlling the agent.
Closing Thoughts on AI Cult Coins
AI agent meme coins are popular for a simple reason: they combine crypto and AI, which often sound like two magical buzzwords in mainstream media. But for the crypto “decent,” it’s the new form of opium they can pour their money into.
It is an extremely speculative market, and few of the investments provide useful returns or any utility at all.
But they know how AI and cryptography can mix, and it often results in extremely weird content and cult-like communities. However, it remains an experimental niche that can yield quite interesting results in the long run.
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