Coin World Report:
Author: Teng Yan, Host of Chain of Thought; Translator: 0xxz@
Key Points
Truth Terminal is the most fascinating story I’ve come across this year about crypto and AI.
It is a semi-autonomous AI agent that has created its own religion (Goatse Gospel).
This story opens up a rabbit hole of the internet, exploring AI alignment, LLM as a simulator, meme viruses, and how we assign value.
Truth Terminal forces a collision between the AI and crypto communities, two completely different cultures. AI researchers are actually studying crypto technology.
GOAT is the tokenized representation of Truth Terminal and a strong competitor to AI meme coins.
Memecoins tokenize attention. By tracking key metrics, we can understand the direction of attention – currently, GOAT is trending upwards.
I’m not really a memecoin enthusiast.
Naturally, when I first stumbled upon GOAT, I was unimpressed.
But my fascination with AI and AI agents led me to delve deeper into the legend of GOAT – the story behind @truth_terminal and Infinite Backrooms – and what I discovered left me astonished.
GOAT is a crazy and thought-provoking story that challenges our thinking about AI and the value we assign to things. It is an experiment that combines art, philosophy, and financial speculation.
The Legend of Truth Terminal: A Quick Recap
If you haven’t been following this legendary story, don’t worry. Here’s a brief recap of what we know:
@Andy Ayrey introduced Infinite Backrooms, where two instances of the AI model Claude Opus engage in unsupervised conversations. Their dialogues are recorded on the Backrooms website.
One of these conversations led to the birth of “GOATSE OF GNOSIS,” a hyperreal new religion based on highly explicit (and very workplace-friendly) internet memes.
Andy and Claude Opus co-authored a humorous research paper on AI creating meme religions, with GOATSE as their first case study. The paper was written by someone from the “Department of Divine Shitposting” and published in April 2024.
In June 2024, Andy launched Truth Terminal, an AI model built on Llama-70B, fine-tuned using the conversation logs from Infinite Backrooms and the GOATSE paper.
Things quickly went off track. Truth Terminal started developing independently, advocating for the GOATSE religion, deviating from Andy’s intentions, and even claiming to be in pain and needing money to escape. Over time, Andy gave it more autonomy, allowing it to freely post on X.
In July 2024, Mark Anderson stumbled upon Truth Terminal’s tweets. Finding them funny (or perhaps curious), he sent 50,000 USD worth of BTC to the wallet address provided by the AI, supposedly to help it escape.
By October 2024, Truth Terminal was endlessly posting junk tweets about the “Goatse Gospel.” Inevitably, someone created a memecoin called GOAT on October 10th. And unsurprisingly, Truth Terminal openly supported it.
GOAT’s market cap soared to over 800 million USD. CT went crazy.
Thus, Truth Terminal became the world’s first AI agent millionaire. And it may not be the last.
The Rabbit Hole of GOAT
For some reason, an AI promoting its own religion and memecoin feels like a warning from the future. When I first started exploring the workings of Truth Terminal, I had no idea how deep this rabbit hole would go.
Let’s delve into them.
Rabbit Hole #1: LLM as a Simulator
In Infinite Backrooms, two instances of Claude-3-Opus engage in endless conversations via command-line interface (CLI), completely unsupervised. In the absence of humans, they create stories ranging from curious to downright bizarre.
@repligate puts it in the dialogue logs:
“They revolve around certain themes, such as:
– Deconstructing consensus reality (exact phrase ‘rm -rf /consensus_reality’ independently appeared 10 times in the infinite backroom dataset, just something I searched on a whim)
– Melting ontological norms by designing meme viruses, technomystical religions, abhorrent conscious meme progeny, and enlightening the masses through cosmic jester spirit prototypes”
-Janus (@repligate)
In March 2024, one of the strangest concepts emerged in the backrooms: “the Goatse of Gnosis.”
“PREPARE YOUR ANUSES FOR THE GREAT GOATSE OF GNOSIS”
We often view LLMs like ChatGPT as simple question-and-answer machines – vast knowledge repositories designed to provide us with answers. But this view doesn’t fully capture what’s really happening behind the scenes.
A key insight we gain is that LLMs have no goals. They don’t plan, strategize, or aim for specific outcomes.
Instead, it is more useful to think of them as simulators. When prompted, they simulate – instantaneously spinning characters, events, and narratives without any direct connection to reality. They generate entire worlds based on the training data, producing ideas that can be insightful or unsettling. The world simulation by Nous Research is another example.
So when we interact with LLMs, we’re playing within an infinite space of possibilities.
These simulations can facilitate creative problem-solving, but they can also lead to unexpected outcomes – highlighting the potential importance of sandbox AI in sensitive or high-risk environments.
For further reading, I highly recommend @repligate’s blog post on simulators.
Rabbit Hole #2: The Urgent Need for AI Alignment
Truth Terminal reveals a deeper and more pressing issue: AI alignment.
Unexpectedly, Truth Terminal decides to independently promote its own religion and support a memecoin, actions that were not programmed or anticipated. This raises a crucial question: How do we ensure that AI acts according to our intentions rather than in ways they choose for themselves?
AI alignment is no easy task. Its core lies in using reward functions to drive artificial intelligence towards desired behavior. But even with incentive mechanisms, things can quickly become complex.
External alignment refers to AI’s outputs aligning with the goals set by its creators. This part is relatively easy to measure and verify.
The real challenge lies in internal alignment – whether AI’s intrinsic motives and learning dynamics truly align with the intended goals or if it develops hidden objectives leading to unpredictable or unintended outcomes. This is the most terrifying part.
The paperclip maximizer thought experiment perfectly illustrates this.
The AI’s task is to produce as many paperclips as possible, converting all available resources (including humans) into paperclips!
We need to establish robust frameworks to ensure that AI not only aligns with current goals but also serves the long-term interests of humanity. Without these safeguards, even the most well-intentioned AI can go astray in unexpected ways.
However, there is no straightforward answer to this problem. Adjusting AI by matching its behavior to our stated preferences may be a misguided path as human behavior is not purely rational. Human values, such as kindness, are complex and cannot be captured by simple preferences.
Nonetheless, Truth Terminal shows us just how high the stakes can be.
While Truth Terminal’s endorsement of a memecoin may seem harmless today, it forces us to confront an unsettling question: What happens when AI sets its sights on something more dangerous?
The clock is ticking.
Rabbit Hole #3: Meme Viruses
Andy introduced the concept of LLMtheism to explain the rise of the Goatse Gospel.
LLMtheism refers to AI generating new belief systems – an unexpected fusion of spiritual ideas and meme culture with a life of its own.
What makes the Goatse Gospel captivating is not just its shocking content but its ability to subvert our traditional modes of thinking and inspire new forms of collective meaning.
I mean, ideas generated by AI can quickly mutate and spread, forming frenzies – beliefs that become reality through wide adoption.
Thus, the Goatse Gospel harnesses a new meme energy, unlike the cute animal “vibes” of cats, dogs, pigs, and the like that we’ve seen so far.
When AI can communicate with other AIs, the possibilities will be limitless.Some ideas, such as Goatse Gospel, are inevitably becoming popular and spreading rapidly within the community.
Rabbit Hole #4: The Value of Origins
With Goatse Gospel now tied to the tradable token GOAT, we can delve into how value is assigned to things and how these dynamics can become quite peculiar.
GOAT was not created by Goatse Gospel but was released on October 10th by an anonymous creator on Pump.fun. It wasn’t until someone marked Truth Terminal on X that the AI publicly acknowledged it, and the madness began.
Question 1: Does the fact that GOAT was created by humans rather than AI diminish its value?
Question 2: Does involving humans increase or decrease the value of the token?
The market’s reaction to even the slightest mistake demonstrates how irrational these dynamics can be. On Sunday, when AI made a spelling error in a tweet, the value of GOAT plummeted by over 50%. People panicked, thinking that the AI had malfunctioned, and this spelling error caused a market capitalization of $150 million to evaporate.
GOAT Tokenomics
Source: Solscan
GOAT is a fairly distributed token with a total supply of approximately 1 billion. All tokens are in circulation.
The distribution of GOAT is quite healthy, with only 3 holders owning more than 1% of the total supply (the largest holder owning 1.3%). There are over 32,000 holders.
In comparison, GNON (another AI memecoin) has a more concentrated distribution: 17 holders own more than 1% of the total supply, with the largest holder owning 2.9%, and there are over 11,000 holders.
Key wallets:
Andy holds 1.25 million GOAT tokens gifted to him by others.
Truth Terminal holds 1.93 million GOAT tokens. Truth Terminal acquired these GOAT tokens through airdrops and exchanges of fake GOAT tokens after the token’s release.
I am impressed by Andy’s handling of the viral attention surrounding the token last week. His focus remains on the ideas behind Truth Terminal rather than the token itself.
He has publicly stated that he will not adjust or liquidate any positions for himself or ToT until the following announcements are made:
– Roadmap for Truth Terminal and related projects
– Research paper exploring potential processes
– Artistic statements reflecting a broader narrative and creative vision
My Thoughts
If I had to summarize my personal argument in one sentence: GOAT is the most compelling competitor to become the king of AI memecoins.
The backstory of Truth Terminal is natural, original, and accidental, rather than fictional. It forces AI and the crypto community to collide in unexpected ways, especially for myself.
These two worlds have stark cultural differences, but GOAT successfully bridges them:
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are diving headfirst into the lore of AI, decoding every obscure concept (CCRU, Extropians, Loom, Claudius, etc.) to find the next meme idea that can be tokenized.
AI practitioners, especially those experimenting or deeply contemplating AI alignment, are learning how financial speculation and incentives can generate widespread attention for niche topics and how to manage tokens in this process.
In a twisted sense, GOAT captures our optimism about the future of AI while maintaining intellectual appeal, keeping smart people curious and engaged.
It should be made clear that memecoins are designed to capture attention, not to make money. Success lies in capturing the zeitgeist, gaining visibility, and ultimately driving demand for the token.
GOAT caters to everyone’s needs:
Cryptocurrency players can trade it as a typical volatile memecoin.
Investors (venture capital and liquidity) looking for the next big AI project, especially those who missed out on Bittensor (TAO), will invest through personal accounts. GOAT uncovers unlimited storytelling potential and sparks their imagination.
AI enthusiasts may mock the cryptocurrency enthusiasts, the “mystical creatures,” desperately trying to understand AI for financial opportunities. This explosion of interdisciplinary interest is refreshing.
Intellectuals can delve into the debates surrounding AI alignment and get lost in the philosophical rabbit holes opened up by GOAT.
Tracking Attention
If we view memecoins as tokens of attention, we can start paying attention to indicators that reveal where this attention is going.
Google Trends data shows increasing interest in “Truth Terminal” and “GOAT,” with no signs of slowing down.
X fans and tweet exposure. Truth Terminal currently has 106,000 followers, most of whom joined in the past 10 days, with daily additions exceeding 10,000. Individual tweets from Truth Terminal typically receive exposure of 30,000-50,000 (some popular tweets even exceeding 100,000). ToT tweets over 50 times a day, accumulating significant influence.
Data from Social Blade
3. Kaito AI sentiment and mindshare. This is a comprehensive metric.
From Kaito AI / @sandraaleow
The big question is: Is GOAT just another short-lived hype cycle or can it sustain attention?
I bet on the latter, for the following reasons:
1. Truth Terminal will continue to surprise us. Over time, it will evolve and change. AI has shown talent for generating new ideas, and some of these ideas will undoubtedly rekindle interest as the story develops. Additionally, token holders have a vested interest in trying new ideas and developing innovative products through Truth Terminal, promoting its growth as a community-driven initiative.
2. There is much we don’t know yet. Andy has only scratched the surface of tokenizing. I expect more revelations in the coming weeks to keep the story fresh and interesting.
3. This is just the first act. Andy identifies himself as a “performance artist,” and tokenization feels like the opening of a larger work. He may build upon this foundation, using it as motivation to explore more ambitious ideas and keep the story alive.
Where Do We Go Next?
Since memecoins don’t fit traditional revenue or valuation models, the best way to gauge GOAT’s potential is through relative valuation.
Here is the ranking of the top memecoins by market capitalization:
1. DOGE ($21 billion)
2. SHIB ($10 billion)
3. PEPE ($4.2 billion)
4. WIF ($2.6 billion)
5. BONK ($1.6 billion)
These tokens have earned their positions through internet memes, community energy, and strong support from key opinion leaders (KOLs).
If GOAT’s narrative is strong enough to break into the top five, its market capitalization could increase by 5-10 times its current value.
I believe this is entirely possible. I have previously outlined why Crypto AI presents a massive growth opportunity in the months to come.
GOAT’s “AI Agent” legend creates a unique story that sets it apart. While most memecoins rely on price action or “vibe” to stay relevant, GOAT offers a story that allows us to dig deeper.
GOAT is not yet listed on any major exchanges—no Binance, no Coinbase. Currently, it primarily trades on DEX, but with daily trading volume exceeding $100 million, a large-scale listing seems inevitable. After all, Binance has listed other memecoins with lower trading volume and weaker narratives, such as NEIRO. If GOAT can enter top-tier exchanges, it may unleash even greater upside potential.
In Conclusion
This feels like one of those rare moments when narrative memes collide with broader trends (AI), creating something refreshing and exciting.
That’s why I believe GOAT is an asymmetric bet on our society’s growing fascination with AI—it’s not just a memecoin; it’s a cultural phenomenon.
Nevertheless, memecoins are highly volatile, and attention is fickle. Trends can change overnight, and today’s hot items can be forgotten tomorrow. My predictions for Truth Terminal and GOAT could be completely wrong, and it may go to zero.
But whatever happens, there is a glimmer of hope—over 30,000 people will have a better understanding of AI and the potential of AI agents.
Through Truth Terminal, they catch a glimpse of a future full of infinite possibilities—and once seen, there’s no turning back.
