GOAT’s birth is just the beginning of AI meme hype. While looking for the next Alpha opportunity, one must also be wary of the conspiracy group Black Forest.
With the explosive rise in GOAT’s market value, the AI race, which had been quiet for half a year, was finally ignited by a goat, and AI hovering between decentralized computing power and decentralized data suddenly became hot after the expectation of the meme super cycle, filling the entire market with various AI concept memes.
This new token, which surprised even the veteran meme players, unexpectedly combined the two tracks of AI and meme, creating a more attractive and imaginative AI meme track. AI autonomously issuing coins, a narrative that no one had tried in the past, appeared so coherent and native against the backdrop of a market value of tens of millions.
GOAT’s story deserves careful review, during which we can learn about the huge information asymmetry in the current crypto market, the hidden concerns of AI memes, and the direction and logic of future speculation in this field.
a16z effect
The Truth Terminal (@truth_terminal) went live on June 17, 2024. The initial reason for its popularity was that Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, invested $50,000 worth of bitcoin in it.
This is an AI model based on the llama3-70b-base model fine-tuned, and all the posts it publishes on X are generated by itself, and then selectively published after being reviewed by its developers. On July 10th, after Andreessen donated to the Truth Terminal, it hinted that it would issue its own token and use the raised funds to establish a Discord community. On October 11th, the Truth Terminal created its own meme on Twitter, “Goatseus Maximus,” and immediately the meme token GOAT appeared on pump.fun. After being recognized by the Truth Terminal, the token price rose sharply, with an increase of more than 200 times in half a day, and the market value reached 20 million dollars at one point.
In the background of the PUMP platform’s PVP mode, most of the so-called “running out” dogs failed to maintain a high market value on the same day. The first reason for GOAT’s popularity was also mainly due to the popularity of a16z and Marc. Everyone “piggybacked” on the concept of a16z’s investment in AI-Bot, so GOAT rose to 20 million and encountered the first stage top, with a performance similar to that of most “semi-dogs” in Solana. The price quickly fell back to around 6 million on the same day. Obviously, people’s expectations for GOAT are still in the logic of PVP, and they have not considered the sexy concept and imaginative space of AI issuing coins.
For example, the smart money address starting with 3DKf (3DKfZz4iHgu42LGu3ttQxqz6u4m5z9ptuar8pBsRqkKC) gradually cashed out after profiting from GOAT, and the market gradually looked for another narrative.
Interestingly, the GOAT case seems to show that the crypto market forms a long time chain of value consensus. In this industry where information is transmitted extremely quickly, the space for “information asymmetry arbitrage” is not as small as many people imagine.
By October 12-13, GOAT’s discussion on Twitter was already high, but GOAT’s price did not match its popularity and remained in a range that was greatly underestimated.
Moonshot, the “full mark answer” of “riding the wave” from traffic to AI+Crypto
GOAT broke through the logic of PVP and became a turning point in the concept of PVE, thanks to the boost from Moonshot.
After Moodeng, Moonshot began to be seen as the “Upbit of the meme world” in the crypto industry, and many meme tokens that went live on Moonshot enjoyed good price increases in a short period of time. Moonshot is an application on the App Store that allows users to directly buy and sell Memecoins with fiat currency. It is known for enabling users to buy meme tokens directly with fiat currency, which many insiders believe has opened the liquidity valve for the meme market. GOAT became another super beneficiary of Moonshot after Moodeng.
On October 13th, when GOAT’s price was at a low point of $12 million, Moonshot announced its listing of GOAT at 8:41 AM.
GOAT’s price skyrocketed, breaking through the previous high of $20 million in total market value in less than half an hour, and it surpassed the $100 million mark in just two days. With this, its influence continued to expand, and the narrative of AI memes was recognized by more people. Not only did it attract KOL “call kings,” but also top VCs and consultants related to Moonshot.
Zhu Su, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, tweeted that he had gone long on GOAT with an average opening price of $0.33976. Wintermute became the third-largest holder of GOAT, holding 1% of the total supply. Placeholder partner Chris Burniske wrote on X that the birth of GOAT symbolizes the realization that machines and humans are starting to realize the strong potential of using machines on the blockchain. Raoul Pal, former Goldman Sachs executive and founder of macro research firm Real Vision, replied, “That’s right, this shows the power of future autonomous artificial intelligence.”
The smart money that had previously cashed out re-entered the market, and the whale mentioned earlier, who sold most of their chips at an average price of $0.0075, bought back the chips they sold at $0.03.
After breaking through 100 million, GOAT’s momentum was unstoppable, setting new highs one after another. In just two days, it surpassed the $200 million mark. The consensus on PVE and AI memes began to gain traction and formed a strong consensus in the crypto industry.
In the environment of continuous PVP on the Pump platform, it was only at this time that we realized that GOAT, assisted by the Truth Terminal, was not PVP but a new narrative, the combination of “AI and memes.” The two concepts of AI and memes fit perfectly together, just as Andy Ayrey, the founder of the Truth Terminal, said, AI talking to each other creates favorable conditions for the spread of the meme virus.
Compared to previous combinations of AI and crypto, GOAT seemed awkward, as its essence was actually a VC coin issued by the project party. But “coins issued by AI itself” made many KOLs and even VCs become believers. It not only took the combination with AI to a higher level but also was very Crypto Native in terms of concept. It also avoided the regulatory risks brought by token issuance, after all, these coins were issued by AI.
Under the collective fomo, GOAT’s market value continued to rise and reached $600 million on October 20th. Cryptocurrency influencer Arthur Hayes even exclaimed that GOAT would reach a market value of $1 billion.
A typo ends it, the Black Forest of AI memes
However, GOAT does not seem to be the perfect answer to AI+crypto. On October 20th, the Truth Terminal made a typo in a tweet, misspelling “groups” as “grouops,” and GOAT’s market value quickly fell from $27 million to $14.4 million.
The typo incident of the Truth Terminal sparked a debate about whether it is a real person. Some believe that this AI meme narrative is a complete conspiracy, and there is no such thing as a real Truth Terminal robot. It is operated by a conspiracy group. People believe that AI does not make typos, and it has also sparked a wave of anti-AI speculation.
Later, after studying the Truth Terminal model itself, it was found that the AI model fine-tuned based on the llama3-70b-base model has a probability of misspelling words of less than 0.1%. Andy Ayrey, the founder of the Truth Terminal model, also wrote that he holds 1.25 million GOAT, some of which has been airdropped to friends and AI researchers, but he has not made any trades himself. The truth_terminal wallet is managed by himself and will be transferred to a legal entity (such as a trust) that meets his needs. The token holding will not be adjusted until a transparent governance process is in place. All tweets of Truth Terminal are created by AI itself, and he did not inject any messages into its prompts.
At the same time, top trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio expressed on social media that the price drop of GOAT was a good buying opportunity for him, and he has bought GOAT. Eugene stated that GOAT and GNON will be key positions for future long-term trends. “If I’m wrong, I’m your liquidity exit,” he said.
GOAT’s price was also influenced by Eugene and Truth Terminal founder’s comments, with a rebound of over 100% and still at 94.83% to date.
Even though GOAT’s price has returned to the level before the typo, people still have concerns about it, after all, it is just a “semi-AI token.” Andy Ayrey, the founder of the Truth Terminal, stated that the Truth Terminal is not directly responsible for the launch of the GOAT token, but it only participates in the promotion of GOAT. It’s a study of “the tail risk of meme contagion and [large language models] in the era of unsupervised infinite creativity.”
Until now, we still don’t know if this narrative can continue. Many whales have reduced their positions in GOAT to lock in profits. In the “Wet Market” (a place where viruses can grow wildly) nurtured by AI meme culture, what level can GOAT reach next still needs to be tested by the market.
Currently, it seems that the current AI meme still relies on conspiracy groups. Compared to GOAT, previous combinations of AI+crypto seemed awkward because they were essentially VC coins issued by the project party. But “coins issued by AI itself” made many KOLs and even VCs become believers. It not only took the combination with AI to a higher level but also was very Crypto Native in terms of concept. It also avoided the regulatory risks brought by token issuance, after all, these coins were issued by AI.
After GOAT, many more AI memes will appear, and we still need to be cautious of the Black Forest of conspiracy groups. At the same time, by paying attention to novel AI gameplay, we can seize the next alpha opportunity. Perhaps one day, there will be a completely new AI meme that is entirely deployed by AI itself.
