With the explosive rise in the market value of GOAT, the AI sector, which had been quiet for half a year, was finally ignited by a goat. AI, which hovers between decentralized computing power and decentralized data, suddenly became hot after the expectation of a meme super cycle was added, filling the entire market with various AI concept memes.
This new token, which has surprised even veteran meme players with its rise, unexpectedly combined the AI and meme sectors, creating a more attractive and imaginative AI meme sector. The narrative of AI issuing its own tokens, which no one had attempted in the past, appears so coherent and native under the backdrop of a market value of tens of millions.
The story of GOAT is worth a careful review. In this process, we can learn about the significant information gap currently existing in the crypto market, the hidden concerns surrounding AI memes, and the future directions and logic of speculation in this sector.
a16z Effect
Truth Terminal (@truth_terminal) launched on June 17, 2024. The initial reason for its breakout was that Marc Andreessen, founding partner of a16z, invested $50,000 worth of Bitcoin into it.
Related reading: “How did this AI robot get top Silicon Valley investors to cough up $50,000 in Bitcoin?”
This is an AI model fine-tuned based on the llama3-70b-base model, and all posts published on X are generated autonomously and selectively released after being reviewed by its developers. On July 10, after Andreessen donated to Truth Terminal, it hinted that it would issue its own token and use the funds raised to establish a Discord community. On October 11, Truth Terminal created its own meme "Goatseus Maximus" on Twitter, and shortly after, a meme token named GOAT appeared on pump.fun. After receiving recognition from Truth Terminal, the token price surged, increasing over 200 times within half a day, with a market value reaching $20 million at one point.
In the context of the PUMP platform's PVP model, most so-called "golden dogs" that "ran out" failed to maintain a high market value on the same day. The initial surge of GOAT was mainly due to the fame of a16z and Marc, as everyone was "riding the wave" of the AI-Bot concept that a16z invested in. Therefore, after GOAT reached $20 million, it encountered its first peak, and its performance was similar to most Solana "semi-golden dogs," with the price quickly falling back to around $6 million on the same day. Clearly, expectations for GOAT were still within the logic of PVP, without considering the attractive concept and imaginative space of AI issuing tokens.
For example, a smart money address starting with 3DKf (3DKfZz4iHgu42LGu3ttQxqz6u4m5z9ptuar8pBsRqkKC) gradually took profits and exited after making gains on GOAT, as the market began to look for another narrative.
Image source: Dexscreener
Interestingly, the case of GOAT seems to showcase the super long time chain of value consensus formation in the crypto market. In an industry where information transmission is extremely rapid, the space for "information gap arbitrage" is not as small as many imagine.
From October 12 to October 13, the discussion around GOAT on Twitter was already quite high, but the price of GOAT did not match its discussion, remaining in a significantly undervalued range.
Savior Moonshot, "Riding the Wave" Becomes AI+Crypto's "Perfect Answer"
GOAT broke through the PVP logic and became a turning point for the PVE concept, thanks to the boost from Moonshot.
After Moodeng, Moonshot began to be seen as the "Upbit of the meme world" in the crypto industry. Many meme tokens that launched after Moonshot experienced significant price increases in a short time. Moonshot is an app on the App Store that allows users to buy and sell Memecoins directly with fiat currency, aiming to enable users to purchase meme tokens directly with fiat. Many insiders believe this opened the liquidity floodgates for the meme market. GOAT became another major beneficiary of Moonshot after Moodeng.
Related reading: “Moonshot: Can you buy Memecoins with fiat?”
On October 13, GOAT's price was at a low point of $12 million. At 8:41 AM, Moonshot's official Twitter announced the launch of GOAT.
GOAT's price then skyrocketed, breaking through the previous high of $20 million in less than half an hour, and within two days, it surpassed the $100 million mark. Its influence continued to grow, and the narrative of AI memes gained wider recognition. Not only KOLs but also various top VCs and advisors related to Moonshot joined in.
Zhu Su, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, posted on social media that he had gone long on GOAT, with an average entry price of $0.33976; Wintermute became the third-largest holder of GOAT, holding 1% of the total supply. Chris Burniske, a partner at Placeholder, tweeted that the birth of GOAT signifies that people and machines are beginning to realize that machines can strongly utilize blockchain. Raoul Pal, former Goldman Sachs executive and founder of macro research firm Real Vision, replied, "Exactly, this demonstrates the power of future autonomous AI."
Those who had previously taken profits began to re-enter, and the smart money address mentioned above returned. A whale that sold most of its holdings at an average price of $0.0075 bought back its sold tokens at $0.03.
Image source: Dexscreener
After breaking through $100 million, GOAT's momentum became unstoppable, continuously setting new highs and surpassing the $200 million mark in just two days. The consensus around PVE and AI memes began to gain traction and formed a strong consensus in the crypto industry.
In the ongoing PVP environment of the Pump platform, it was only at this point that we realized that GOAT, which was assisted by Truth Terminal in its issuance, was not PVP but a completely new narrative of "the combination of AI and memes." The concepts of AI and memes fit perfectly, just as Andy Ayrey, the founder of Truth Terminal, said, AI talking to each other is a good condition for meme viral spread.
Compared to GOAT, previous combinations of AI and crypto seemed awkward because their essence was also VC tokens issued by project parties. However, "tokens issued by AI itself" made many KOLs and even VCs become believers. It not only elevated the combination with AI but also was very Crypto Native in concept, while also avoiding regulatory risks associated with token issuance, as this is a token issued by AI.
Amidst the collective FOMO, GOAT's market value soared, reaching a high of $600 million on October 20, with crypto big names like Arthur Hayes even suggesting that GOAT would reach a market value of $1 billion.
A Typo Ends It All, the Dark Forest of AI Meme
However, GOAT does not seem to be the perfect answer for AI+crypto. On October 20, Truth Terminal made a typo in a tweet, misspelling "groups" as "grouops," causing GOAT's market value to plummet from $27 million to $14.4 million.
The typo incident at Truth Terminal sparked discussions about whether it was truly a real person. Some believe that the hype around the AImeme narrative is a complete conspiracy, claiming there is no real Truth Terminal robot, and that a conspiracy group operates Truth Terminal. People think AI would not make typos, leading to a wave of anti-AI sentiment.
Later, after in-depth research on the Truth Terminal model itself, people discovered that the AI model fine-tuned based on the llama3-70b-base model has less than a 0.1% probability of misspelling words. Andy Ayrey, the founder of the Truth Terminal model, also stated that he holds 1.25 million GOAT tokens, a portion of which has been airdropped to friends and AI researchers, but he himself has not conducted any transactions. The truth_terminal wallet is self-custodied and will be transferred to a legal entity (trust or similar institution) designed to meet its needs; no adjustments to its token holdings will be made until a transparent governance process is in place. All tweets from Truth Terminal are created by the AI itself, and no messages have been injected into its prompts.
At the same time, top trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio stated on social media that the drop in GOAT presents a good buying opportunity for him, and he has bought GOAT. Eugene indicated that GOAT and GNON will become key positions for long-term trends in the future. "If I'm wrong, I am your exit liquidity," he stated.
GOAT's price was also influenced by the comments from Eugene and the founder of Truth Terminal, with GOAT rebounding over 100% at its peak, and it still stands at 94.83%.
Even though GOAT's price has returned to the level before the typo, there are still concerns about it, as it is merely a "semi-AI token." The founder of Truth Terminal, Andy Ayrey, stated that Truth Terminal is not directly responsible for launching the GOAT token; it only participated in the promotion of GOAT. Instead, it is focused on "researching the tail risks generated by meme contagion and the unsupervised infinite creativity of the [large language model] era."
At this point, we still do not know if this narrative can continue. Many whales have begun to reduce their holdings in GOAT to lock in profits. In the "Wet Market" of AI, where meme culture thrives (a place where viruses can grow wildly), it remains to be seen how far GOAT can go in the future, as the market will have to test it.
Currently, it seems that the existing AI meme has not yet escaped its reliance on conspiracy groups. In this case, it resembles a "semi-AI meme," as Truth Terminal did not participate in the token issuance but merely recognized and promoted the token. Undeniably, AI memes have a high level of attractiveness in their narrative and significant imaginative space in their gameplay, but the market's speculation expectations extend beyond a16z and AI shout-out memes. The market is waiting for a token that is entirely deployed by AI or autonomously issued on the Pump platform—a completely fair "full AI meme," with no insider trading, no market control, and all chips distributed fairly, driven by market consensus, allowing the market to realize that future autonomous AI can also have strong applications in blockchain.
The emergence of GOAT is just the beginning of AI meme speculation; it has opened a new direction, and many more AI memes will appear afterward. However, it is still necessary to guard against the dark forest of conspiracy groups while keeping an eye on novel AI gameplay to seize the next alpha opportunity. Perhaps one day, a completely new AI meme will emerge, entirely deployed by AI itself.
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