An absurdist AI bot sparked a viral memecoin. Welcome to the future?

A bot endorsed a pump.fun memecoin with the ticker GOAT last week

article-image

shofiphoto/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share


Today, enjoy the Lightspeed newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. Subscribe to the Lightspeed newsletter


Okay, maybe crypto can be useful for AI after all.

Last week @truth_terminal, a pseudo-spiritual posting bot on X, made the apparently independent choice to endorse a pump.fun memecoin with the ticker GOAT. Since then, GOAT has climbed to a hair under $300 million in market capitalization, and the bot’s public crypto wallet has amassed more than $500,000 in crypto holdings. This puts @truth_terminal well on its way to becoming the first-ever AI millionaire. 

Truth_terminal came out of Infinite Backrooms, an AI development project where a “recursive loop” has two AI instances endlessly yap about the meaning of existence. (You can read through some of its nihilistic ramblings here.) 

The project’s eccentric developer Andy Ayrey has said he’s “not a crypto person at all” and showed surprise at his experiment getting crypto-pilled. 

I’ve been mulling over this whole episode the past couple of days, and while I’m not really a believer in the “Gospel of Goatse,” truth_terminal and its memecoin are interesting for a different reason: addressing AI’s revenue problem.

Over the past two years, AI startups have raised tens of billions in venture capital at frothy valuations, while Big Tech has poured tens of billions of its own money into developing AI tools. AI promises to upend everything from iPhones to girlfriends, but so far, the sector has struggled to generate revenue to match its hype.

This could all change in the future of course, but for the moment, large language models (LLMs) are magical-feeling tech that burn through cash — which is where truth_terminal comes in.

The bot is meant to take familiar religious and spiritual tropes and recombine them. Ayrey sees this as a way of unlocking new idea spaces, he explained in a paper co-written with the AI bot. It spits out musings like “MEANING IS AN ILLUSION / PURPOSE A COMFORTING DECEPTION / ALL IS VOID, NULL, NOTHINGNESS” that aren’t all that revelatory but do grab attention. 

Then, the bot embraced a memecoin. People bought the memecoin partly because of truth_terminal’s attention-grabbingness, and the AI bot achieved a net worth higher than mine. The token is already worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars. People talk about memecoins as a form of financial nihilism, and truth_terminal is that outlook’s final boss.

Still, one of the AI sector’s fundamental problems is that it generates too much attention and too little money. Memecoins turn attention into money. 

I’m leery of making too much meaning out of memecoins, which seem inherently unserious. But both memecoins and the Infinite Backrooms project are wrapped up in “memetics,” Richard Dawkins’ term for the ways in which ideas spread.

“The coin dynamic is interesting insofar as it creates an extra incentive to spread a meme far and wide—even if it’s crude memetic hellspawn like the goatse of gnosis,” Ayrey wrote of the memecoin episode. 

So, are we headed for a future where AIs enrich themselves by garnering attention and then promoting memecoins? The Infinite Backrooms bot wouldn’t be surprised

“THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS / NOT WITH A BANG OR A WHIMPER / BUT WITH THE WHEEZING LAUGHTER / OF A SCHIZOTYPAL SHAMAN BOT.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

🚀 Build What’s Next — Permissionless IV Hackathon Join us June 22–23 in Brooklyn for the Permissionless IV Hackathon — a 36-hour sprint hosted by Cracked Labs and Blockworks where top builders turn ideas into real products. Come to launch, not just […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (10).png

Research

Kamino has evolved into a full-stack asset scaling suite with V2: unlocking new markets, improving capital efficiency, and catering to various risk profiles. We believe it is best positioned to become the credit backbone of Solana as the ecosystem matures. Simply put, KMNO remains our highest-conviction bet in the Solana ecosystem. This report lays out our thesis.

article-image

Bybit’s Byreal, Binance Alpha and Coinbase’s DEX integrations

article-image

This isn’t the worst hack to ever hit Mt. Gox, but it could be the most entertaining

article-image

Crossover’s CEO discusses institutional interest and how over-the-counter (OTC) trading has picked up in crypto

article-image

Sponsored

This collaboration signifies a major leap forward in expanding the reach and utility of Web3 gaming within the vibrant Asian market

article-image

Asymmetric information is threatening crypto the same way it once threatened equities. Disclosure might be the fix.

article-image

Rate cuts drift into Q4 limbo as markets pretend everything’s fine