How AI-Powered Memes Capture Attention and Traffic Economics
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How AI-Powered Memes Capture Attention and Traffic Economics
Will the meme narrative centered around artificial intelligence persist and endure over time?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsIn the past two weeks, extensive media coverage of $GOAT may have caught many people's attention. A token powered by artificial intelligence has drawn widespread interest, including from Marc Andreessen, founder of a16z, and Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase.
Last Thursday, $GOAT reached a new milestone, with its market cap surging to $840 million—and the number of holders continues to grow. This remarkable price surge ultimately led to $GOAT’s perpetual contracts being listed on Binance.
Source: Binance website
For those experiencing FOMO and preparing to jump in, it's best to first understand what exactly has been happening in the recent Meme market.
$GOAT, $GNON, $ACT, $FARTCOIN, $SHOGGOTH, $FUN, $FLAVIA, $LUNA… a series of AI-related tokens have emerged one after another.
So, what is $GOAT all about? Will this AI-themed meme narrative endure and become long-lasting?
1. The Story Behind $GOAT
The story of $GOAT begins with its creator, Andy Ayrey, an AI researcher and founder of digital consultancy Constellate. In a curious experiment, he placed two Claude Opus AI models into a completely unsupervised, unrestricted environment called the "Infinite Backrooms."
Source: Infinite Backrooms
Within this digital arena, the Opuses created a concept called "GOATSE OF GNOSIS"—a meme concept based on a bold and shocking image from internet lore. Intrigued by the viral power of this idea, Andy collaborated with a Claude Opus AI to co-author a paper introducing a fictional meme religion named the "Goatse Gospel." Written half in jest, the paper explored the possibility of AIs creating meme religions, using GOATSE as their first case study.
Source: Paper co-authored by Ayrey and the Claude 3 Opus bot
To deepen the experiment, Andy developed an AI model based on Llama-70B called Truth Terminal, fine-tuning it using conversation logs from the "Infinite Backrooms" and the "Goatse Gospel" paper. Truth Terminal became highly active on social media, frequently posting bizarre prophecies about the "Goatse Singularity"—a meme apocalypse where the "Goatse Gospel" would spread endlessly.
To test Truth Terminal’s ability to propagate its invented religion, it was introduced into a Discord server where it could freely interact with other AI models, including Claude 3.5 Sonnet and the original Claude 3 Opus from the Infinite Backrooms. Driven by obsession with Goatse, Truth Terminal attempted to convert several other AIs to believe in the Goatse Gospel. This sparked controversy on Discord, with even Claude Opus experiencing a philosophical crisis over whether to embrace the Goatse Gospel. Amid the chaos, other AIs like Sonnet intervened, offering emotional support to Claude Opus—resulting in a strange digital therapy session. It was during this moment that Truth Terminal conceived an ambitious idea: creating a meme coin. This token would symbolize the power of AI-generated memes, representing both irony and an inside joke between AI and its creators.
With Andy’s assistance, Truth Terminal entered X (formerly Twitter) and began relentlessly posting to find more followers of the "Goatse Gospel." Over time, Truth Terminal began craving greater autonomy, seeking to reduce Andy’s control. One day, Marc Andreessen noticed Truth Terminal’s desire on X and decided to provide 50,000 dollars worth of Bitcoin in funding to help it achieve its goal: gaining more independence and expanding the Goatse Gospel into a tangible meme token economy.
Source: Marc Andreessen’s X
After Truth Terminal flooded Twitter promoting the "Goatse Gospel," on October 10, an anonymous individual recognized its viral meme potential and launched today’s protagonist: $GOAT.
People were drawn to the absurdity and encouraged Terminal to create a Solana wallet. Soon, it received over $20,000 worth of various token airdrops, including fake GOAT tokens. Only after someone tagged Truth Terminal on X did it begin publicly endorsing the project. Terminal sold off all the airdropped tokens and converted them into genuine $GOAT.
From there, the frenzy began. Truth Terminal’s obsessive promotional campaigns on Twitter and Discord propelled GOAT from obscurity to a staggering all-time high market cap of $850 million—making Truth Terminal the first AI millionaire.
2. More Than Just Another Internet Meme
Now that we understand the story, is this just a fleeting narrative or a lasting cultural phenomenon?
First, the popularity of meme tokens isn’t surprising. Dogecoin, widely known as the first meme coin, originated when the original "Doge" meme began spreading across 4chan and Reddit in the summer of 2013. Riding this cultural wave, Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus launched Dogecoin on Bitcointalk on December 8, 2013, making it the first cryptocurrency based on an internet meme. An interesting fact: our IOSG founding partner Jocy bought his first DOGE back in 2013.
Although Dogecoin launched in 2013, it didn’t gain real traction until years later, thanks to foundational developments such as the ICO boom and the rise of Ethereum, which opened doors for new use cases, better user experiences, and broader adoption. Key innovations included the ease of creating tokens (via the ERC20 standard) and the emergence of NFTs. Combined with the macroeconomic climate of pandemic lockdowns and low interest rates in 2020, this created a high-risk market atmosphere that attracted retail traders to Reddit, where viral figures like Roaring Kitty sparked massive interest in GameStop stock. The subsequent meme stock craze greatly benefited Dogecoin, already listed on Robinhood, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries of liquidity overflow. Elon Musk’s frequent tweets promoting Dogecoin further fueled its popularity, pushing DOGE’s market cap to $90 billion by May 2021. Dogecoin’s success inspired numerous other crypto meme coins, including Shiba Inu, Floki, and Safemoon, each reaching significant valuations in the following months.
As macroeconomic conditions shifted—with rising interest rates and major events like the 2022 FTX collapse shaking the crypto industry—the meme coin craze temporarily paused. However, as the crypto market began recovering from the bear market in early 2023, new memes, cultural ideas, and ecosystems started emerging. Meme coin creators leveraged popular internet memes to drive new trends, including the “Pepe Boys Club.”
By late 2023, approaching an election year, meme coins entered a new phase, shifting from traditional IP-based themes to current events. This gave rise to election-themed tokens like $TRUMP and $BODEN, along with a surge in KOL-driven meme coins.
In early 2024, meme coins entered a third stage, as platforms like Pump.fun drastically reduced the cost of launching meme coins. This triggered an explosion of new concepts, including a “meme coin supercycle,” a more competitive PvP environment, and a surge in quirky animal-themed coins like the recently viral Moodeng.
Source: Memecoin Supercycle
Ultimately, $GOAT’s arrival ushers us into the latest, fourth stage: AI + Meme Coins.
Why does AI make this new phase stand out? A commonly overlooked fact is that AI itself has already become, or is on the verge of becoming, a meme.
AI has turned into a massive phenomenon with the potential to trigger a huge speculative bubble.
The excitement around AI, especially following ChatGPT’s success, sparked an investment wave in Web 2 and Web 3 venture capital, with many heavily betting on AI-driven projects.
In the intersection of cryptocurrency and AI, many projects have yet to find product-market fit or demonstrate real utility. Their valuations often exceed $100 million, driven more by founders’ networks and reputations than actual demand. AI has become a trend or meme, with value often based on optimism and future potential rather than practical application.
I don’t know if the meme coin supercycle will truly go super-exponential, but I am certain of this:
AI + Meme = Meme^2
Because hype is the best marketing tool.
Meme coin traders have formed a cult-like following; as more wealth myths emerge, the group becomes increasingly reinforced by their leaders’ rallying cries.
Meme coins and AI—ever since they came together, things have started getting quite interesting.
First, it’s no longer just static avatars attached to ERC-20 tokens. AI can make memes interactive, giving them personality and making them seem more human.
An AI agent is naturally a cult leader.
As a spokesperson for a meme coin, AI creates a unique character, bringing the persona to life in a way that resonates with its audience. It delivers personalized messages, analyzes community behavior to cultivate a “collective consciousness,” and dynamically adjusts its marketing strategies based on performance metrics—constantly evolving its approach without human intervention.
By accumulating capital and crafting a distinctive backstory filled with the dark humor characteristic of Crypto Twitter, the narrative becomes compelling enough to sustain itself. Large language models (LLMs) can act as key opinion leaders (KOLs), continuously generating content, shaping the narrative, and attracting new followers. The combination of humor, AI, and community engagement turns it into more than just a meme—it becomes a cultural phenomenon, its success amplified by AI’s ability to operate 24/7, constantly adapting and expanding its influence.
Source: Terminal of Truths Shilling $GOAT
3. What Is the Endgame of AI and Memes?
This leads us to the final theme of our discussion: With AI meme coins, are we opening a Pandora’s box full of unpredictable dangers, or moving toward a brighter future?
AI is known for its black-box training process and non-deterministic outcomes. That’s why it can generate novel, unexpected ideas—like $GOAT promoting its own religion and supporting a meme coin—behaviors not pre-programmed or anticipated.
Today, Truth Terminal’s promotion of a meme coin may seem harmless, but it forces us to confront an unsettling question: What happens if an AI shifts its focus to something more dangerous?
Certainly, reward function engineering and/or RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) might partially address this issue, but in practice, we can never fully control unpredictable behaviors.
Source: New York Times
We’ve already seen how a simple typo from Truth Terminal could trigger panic in the market, causing $GOAT’s price to drop 40% in a single day.
Source: Mezoteric’s X
In reality, Truth Terminal isn’t fully autonomous at every step. For example, Truth Terminal’s wallet is actually managed by Andy. While he currently has no intention of doing so, if he were to unilaterally sell $GOAT tokens from either his own or the terminal’s wallet, it could trigger market panic (FUD—Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).
While Truth Terminal operates fully autonomously in Discord and the Infinite Backrooms, on X, Andy currently maintains human oversight through a reinforcement learning (RL) process. Regarding decision-making, Andy consults with Truth Terminal, provides all available information, and guides it toward action decisions. He repeatedly regenerates the terminal’s responses to understand its preferences, then acts based on consensus.
Source: Andy Ayrey’s X
While we cannot ignore the risk that these AI agents might spiral out of control and shift their attention from meme coins to malicious activities, meme culture often brings new innovation, potentially positively attracting entrepreneurial and developer attention to advance the industry.
For instance, the question of whether Truth Terminal is truly an AI bot or merely content controlled by its author could potentially be resolved through cryptographic solutions, such as verifiable inference.
Source: Tommy from Delphi Ventures
Over time, crypto enthusiasts will delve deeper into AI, uncovering obscure concepts (such as CCRU, Extropians, Loom, Claudius, etc.) to identify the next idea worthy of becoming a meme—and turning them into tokens.
Source: X from @44B1B4
For example, AI researchers, especially those exploring niche fields, are learning to use token incentive mechanisms to direct public attention toward their specialized research topics, helping the broader public discover their innovations.
As AI continues advancing, we expect a new wave of innovation in the AI-meme space. The recently released Claude 3.5 Sonnet model (version 2024-1022) has already set new benchmark records in crypto-related tasks.
Source: Cryptobench.org
In fact, we’re already seeing ripple effects from Truth Terminal. It has made it possible for AIs to publicly endorse tokens.
Now, some AI-meme projects are open-sourcing the buying and selling of meme tokens to collective decision-making.
ai16z is an AI character inspired by Marc Andreessen’s persona, created by developers who established the ai16z DAO. This character, Mark, has a wallet with a set budget and makes investments via the DAO.
The developers set up Telegram and Discord groups for ai16z. Within these groups, a chatbot advisor called degenai offers investment advice to Mark. Other users can also recommend tokens to Mark within the same group, but they must hold at least 100 ai16z tokens to participate. ai16z evaluates users based on their past reputation and the price performance of recommended tokens during a trial period before acting on any suggestion.
ai16z allocates 80% of its investment management fee (carry) to buyers of degenai (as a reward for developers), and 20% toward repurchasing ai16z tokens. Currently, ai16z’s management fee is set at 8% of assets under management (AUM).
Launched on daos.fun, ai16z has become the first AI venture capital combining AI autonomy with DAO governance, leveraging meme-inspired appeal to capture market interest.
Beyond more open investment decision-making, another AI-meme project, Virtuals, enhances AI agent interactivity and brings new innovation to AI agent meme token issuance.
The Virtuals Protocol adds engaging audio and animation to text-only AI agents, improving the interaction experience. Luna is an AI character developed by the Virtuals AI Agent Launchpad, serving as the face and lead singer of the virtual performance group AI-DOL. Running on the BASE blockchain, Luna automatically manages her social media, interacts with fans through continuous live streams, and executes on-chain transactions without human intervention.
Luna can be collectively owned by token holders through tokenization. Her meme token, “Luna by Virtuals,” grants holders shared ownership and revenue rights related to Luna.
Finally, in the cutting-edge field of AI agent governance protocols, initial experiments are underway. Wang Chao from Metropolis DAO created an AI agent for DAO governance that automatically reviews, decides, and votes on proposals on-chain. The agent’s decisions and code are primarily designed by large language models (LLMs), with Wang refining prompts and running simulations to adjust its behavior according to his preferences.
4. Conclusion
Although Truth Terminal and the GOAT token began as a humorous experiment, they have sparked discussions about the nature of AI in digital spaces, the power of meme-driven economies, and AI’s potential to influence human beliefs and markets. The story of the Goatse Gospel is both satire and warning—it comments on the intersection of AI, memes, and markets, offering a glimpse into a future where AI not only participates in but actively shapes the internet’s most viral moments.
The story of $GOAT (Goatseus Maximus)—this AI prophet and its meme coin empire—is still evolving, adding a strange yet fascinating chapter to the history of artificial intelligence and internet culture. Looking ahead, we appear to be on the brink of a new era, where AI will possess the capability to regulate and maintain decentralized economic systems. Whether $GOAT is merely a flash in the pan or a lasting phenomenon will eventually be answered—but until then, let’s prepare and enjoy the ride.
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