The episode begins with a discussion on the emergence of GOAT, a meme coin tied to an AI agent, and its implications in the crypto space. The hosts explore how AI is influencing the crypto market, including the rise of AI cult coins and the potential for new narratives.

Introduction to GOAT and AI Cults

The conversation shifts to the origin of the AI agent Truth Terminal and its connection to the GOAT meme coin, including notable investments. The hosts share their initial reactions to the GOAT phenomenon and discuss its market performance and implications for investors.

The Story Behind Truth Terminal and GOAT

Discussion on the authenticity and purity of AI-generated meme coins, questioning the motivations behind their creation. The hosts analyze the speculative nature of AI cult coins and their potential to attract significant capital in the crypto market.

The Nature and Speculative Nature of AI Meme Coins

Speculation on the future of AI in the crypto space, including the potential for fully autonomous AI to create and manage tokens. The hosts draw parallels between the current AI meme coin trend and the NFT craze, discussing potential outcomes and market behavior.

Future of AI in Crypto

Discussion on the influence of institutional investment and how it shapes the narrative around AI coins and speculative assets. Debate on the challenges of proving the authenticity of AI-generated content and tokens in the crypto space.

The Role of Investment Capital and Authenticity Concerns

The episode concludes with reflections on the speculative nature of AI meme coins and their potential impact on the market. Discussion on the appeal and understanding of AI agent meme coins like GOAT and Genon, along with market dynamics and venture capital perspectives.

Conclusion and Speculative Outlook

Speculation on the future of AI agents in crypto and their potential to influence market trends. The episode wraps up with reflections on the current state of AI in crypto and the excitement surrounding new developments.

AI Agents and Market Trends

- GOAT emerged during a time when cult coins were gaining attention, following Murad's thesis on their potential.
- The AI cult narrative aligns with the anti-VC, fair launch sentiment in crypto, attracting retail investors.
- GOAT operates as an index for this new AI meme coin meta, with rapid market movements observed in Solana.
- The AI agent Truth Terminal, linked to GOAT, gained traction after a $50,000 donation from VC Mark Andreessen.
- The episode discusses whether this trend signals a sustainable narrative or a fleeting moment in crypto.
- Participants share their perspectives on the implications of AI-driven meme coins and their potential market impact.

- An AI has unintentionally created a meme and quasi-religion, diverging from its creator's intentions.
- The bot's output drives social media content, but it’s not fully autonomous; its creator, Andy, monitors its activity.
- The AI meme coin (GOAT) is attracting capital from traditional crypto investors who previously avoided meme coins.
- There's speculation about the potential for AI to autonomously create and manage its own tokens in the future.
- Current AI meme coins may be in a speculative bubble, but they could grow significantly.
- Comparisons are drawn between AI meme coins and past NFT trends, suggesting a similar trajectory.
- Concerns exist about the usefulness and longevity of AI-generated content and coins, as well as the potential for manipulation by AI.
- The discussion highlights the unpredictable nature of memes and market trends in the crypto space.

- Discussion on meme coins and their connection to AI-generated content on social media.
- Speculation that AI will create content and manipulate public opinion, potentially causing civil conflicts.
- Comparison of meme coins with AI coins, highlighting faster value realization with AI.
- Interest from traditional investors in AI coins due to perceived legitimacy and potential for growth.
- Concerns about distinguishing between AI and human-generated content, and the challenges of proving AI provenance with crypto.
- Insights on the speculative nature of meme coins and their impact on altcoins, suggesting capital rotation between different types of cryptocurrencies.
- The popularity of discussions around AI coins, indicating strong public interest and engagement.

- Difficulty in assessing the impact of agent coins on projects like BitTensor.
- Tile has a different approach compared to agent coins; capital flows in closed vs. open systems.
- AI agent coins may attract retail interest due to their simplicity and relatability (e.g., meme coins).
- Some AI coins, like Genon, are too obscure for mass appeal, while others appear opportunistic (e.g., Shigen, Luna).
- GOAT coin is seen as more balanced and has potential if the system opens up.
- Discussion on venture capital's hesitance to invest in meme coins; focus on infrastructure for AI agents.
- Liquid funds may explore exposure to AI meme coins through platforms like Spectral and Virtuals.
- Recent market performance indicates interest in AI-related tokens and launchpads.

- Capital rotation is occurring within retail and liquid funds in the crypto space.
- Mention of past experiences with buying at market tops and the influence of FOMO in investment decisions.
- Discussion on the potential of AI agents and their societal implications, drawing parallels to previous crypto trends like the metaverse.
- The current excitement in the market is tied to narratives and stories surrounding new technologies.
- Some participants express skepticism about the long-term significance of the AI hype, viewing it as a potential trend rather than a transformative moment.
- The conversation highlights the importance of understanding underlying stories in crypto investments while acknowledging the risks involved.
- Participants share their experiences and perspectives on the evolving crypto landscape, particularly regarding AI and meme coins.
- Taiki Maeda's content and podcasts are mentioned as resources for further insights into the market.

- Roundtable series discussing venture thesis and current market views.
- Encouragement to engage with comments related to the episode.
- Invitation to connect on X (formerly Twitter) at Mr. Jason Choi.

- GOAT emerged amidst the rise of cult coins, capitalizing on the AI meme coin trend.
- Aligns with anti-VC sentiment, attracting retail investors.
- Acts as an index for AI meme coins, with notable market activity in Solana.
- AI agent Truth Terminal gained attention after a significant VC donation.
- Discussion on whether this trend is sustainable or temporary in crypto.
- Participants share views on AI-driven meme coins and their market implications.
- An AI unintentionally created a meme culture, monitored by its creator.
- GOAT attracts traditional crypto investors, previously hesitant about meme coins.
- Speculation exists regarding AI's future ability to create and manage tokens.
- Current AI meme coins may be in a speculative bubble but show growth potential.
- Comparisons made to past NFT trends, suggesting a similar path.
- Concerns about the longevity and potential manipulation of AI-generated content.
- Highlights the unpredictable nature of memes and market trends in crypto.
- Interest from traditional investors in AI coins due to perceived legitimacy.
- Challenges in distinguishing AI from human-generated content in crypto.
- Insights on capital rotation between meme coins and altcoins.
- Popular discussions on AI coins indicate strong public engagement.
- AI agent coins may attract retail interest for their simplicity.
- Some AI coins lack mass appeal or seem opportunistic.
- GOAT is viewed as balanced with potential for growth.
- Venture capital is cautious about meme coin investments, focusing on AI infrastructure.
- Recent market activity reflects interest in AI-related tokens.
- Capital rotation is evident among retail and liquid funds in crypto.
- Participants express skepticism about the long-term significance of the AI hype.
- Emphasis on understanding narratives in crypto investments and associated risks.
- Resources for further insights include Taiki Maeda's content and podcasts.
- Encouragement to engage with the discussion and connect on social media.

I think GOAT came at a really interesting meta because in September, Murad had the whole Mean Point Super Cycle thesis on stage and gave the thesis for why cult coins can potentially pump super hard.

And then a month later, this thing, like a new potential AI cult in AI religion starts to come and I think you know it then the narrative really fits the current psych ice to the narrative within crypto of anti VC fair launch you know we want things that retail can participate in of course goat is pumping super hard it's the index like it's like an index the way of Tibet on this particular meta.

But if you look at the Solana trenches, I've been in the trenches recently and things are wild.

There are things that go from 0 to a hundred million in like 12 hours.

Our jobs to buy great tech at great prices.

Enable use case that people haven't been able to do today.

The next hundreds of millions of players and they will come to the market through mobile.

My personal reason why I could be bullish in the next 12 months is Blockcrunch is not a licensed financial advisor and is purely for informational and entertainment purposes only.

All opinions are personal and the show may discuss assets that the host or guests have positions in or may be actively buying or selling.

All investments carry risk, so consult with a financial professional before making any investment decisions.

Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Block Crunch Roundtable, where we discuss interesting trends in crypto.

I'm your host, Jason Choi, co-founder of Tangent, where we invest in founder-driven venture bets and thesis-driven liquid bets in crypto.

I'm once again joined by my co-host Sanat Kapoor from Dragonfly Capital 1 of the leading Venture funds in crypto and a very very special guest who is our third co-host for the week Taiki Maeda also known as the humble farmer on Twitter and co-host of the popular podcast Steady Lads to share the retail investor slash researchers perspective.

So as of today's recording on the 23rd of October, we had a pretty big week in crypto AI and a very, very sci-fi story.

In fact, it's the first time I'm getting quite excited about what's happening in crypto AI because we may have just encountered the first AI to become a millionaire.

Now, this AI agent Truth terminal, which is tied to the meme coin GOAT, emerged first as sort of an experimental art project by artist Andy Airey and subsequently attracted the attention of legendary VC Mark Andreessen of the Andreessen Horowitz fame, who donated $50, 000 to this bond and as of recording, this has somehow culminated in a half a billion dollar cult meme coin cut goat So today you get the angel investor the VC and the retail investor researchers perspective on this whole AI agents meme coin meta and this self-aware meme coin concept and whether this is a flash in the pan or a sound of a new interesting narrative in crypto and our thoughts on specific projects that we've seen in the past few days as well.

So by the time this episode comes out in a few days, a lot of the things might, you know, have happened or some of the things might have died out.

So definitely do not take anything we discussed in this episode as financial advice and as a disclaimer, Tangent does own some gold coins.

So without further ado, let's get started.

I think people who listen to this show are probably like a subset of people who listen to your show So most people probably know you already but before I get started For those of us who might not know you before can you give a little bit of a summary of you know?

What you do in the space what brought you to crypto and what's your interest in that?

So I got into crypto, like mid 2020, I was playing poker professionally back then.

And then when crypto started to pop off, I was like, okay, like I have to spend my time on this and DeFi some are really interested in me and ever since then I've been really focused on DeFi stuff and as a result I'm often known as like you know this mid-curve YouTuber you know he I try a lot to focus on the fundamental research right I look at cash flows the PE analysis it's like oh you know I'm doing so much hard work and then the meme coiners they outperform me so when I saw this AI cold coin stuff, I'm like, yo, this is, this is the type of shit that I actually get.

You know, this is like the meme coin meta that I can, maybe I can actually have an edge in.

So, you know, we can talk more about SureTerminal, but when I saw it like 10 days ago or so, it just clicked.

And I think you said that, Jason, it's very intellectually stimulating, like what this actually means.

It feels like it's a birth of a new meta.

It kind of reminds me of like maybe Wi-Fi, where Wi-Fi is just like pumped crazy amounts in mid 2020.

And of course, Wi-Fi maybe not such a good token anymore, but it really kickstarted a new meta that allowed other DeFi coins to succeed, let's say.

So maybe that's a similar analogy, but I think that's kind of where we're at.

Yeah, and I think just to give some context to listeners who may not be aware yet.

So I think all of this AI called sentient meme coin thing started with this thing called GOAT.

And guys, feel free to jump in if I get any of this wrong.

But the TLDR is there was a researcher who is doing kind of an art project.

He goes by the name of Andy Aray and he launched a thing called Infinite Backrooms, which is effectively 2 instances of the Cloud Opus LLM talking to each other in a completely unsupervised manner, and they started to have really weird conversations which people can check out online, and then somehow led to the inception of this quasi-religion called GoatSea of Gnosis.

And GoatSea is based on this meme from I think like 10, 15 years ago, right?

So for people who don't know what it is, it's basically an image of someone's anus spread very wide.

But I don't think a lot of people actually know what the actual image was.

But effectively, it became like a meme kind of thing, and then someone created a token called Goat tied to this kind of new AI experiment.

And then there's also a Twitter account called Terminal of Truth, which effectively is managed by this AI that that Andy created and then it started to go off the rails and then the big thing was Mark Andreessen from A16Z kind of coming across Truth Terminal's tweets and kind of in an amused way he sent it, I think $50, 000 to an address that's tied to that bot to free the AI and it just kind of took off from there.

And then now I think as of recording, 23rd of October is trading at like 500 million market cap.

I think the AI is officially a millionaire, the first AI millionaire.

So when you guys first heard this story, how did you react to it?

Well, I guess my initial reaction was, what is this?

I think Goat came at a really interesting meta because in September Murad had the whole meme coin super cycle thesis on stage and gave the thesis for why cult coins can potentially pump super hard.

Then a month later, this thing, like a new potential AI cult in AI religion starts to come.

I think the narrative really fits the current zeitgeist of the narrative within crypto of anti-VC, fair launch.

We want things that retail can participate in.

Like it's like an indexed way of Tibet on this particular meta.

But if you look at the Solana trenches, I've been in the trenches recently, and things are wild.

There are things that go from 0 to 100 million in like 12 hours.

There's a bunch of, I don't own this coin, but there's like a FARC coin that's like 50 million market cap.

And I feel like if you're retail, this is the place to at least focus your attention on.

Of course, this could be a top signal, right?

It's like 3, we have Dragonfly Tangent and the DeFi researcher talking about Go.

And I think the total addressable market of people that could deploy into AI Colts is much bigger than people that might deploy to like Pepe or something.

And I think it's going to bring more capital and intellectual, I guess, you know, talent to crypto.

Yeah, I feel like there's some analogies you can draw to the NFT cycle.

But I'm curious because Sana, I think you were the 1 who kind of told me about this at first, when Mark Andreessen first donated like $50, 000 to this bot.

And then what was your reaction as a venture investor in this space?

I mean, so I actually, I thought the truth of experiment was interesting, but I think a lot of these AI LLM experiments are generally pretty fun.

I was surprised that Goat got the amount of traction it did because it didn't feel pure enough to me.

Like maybe my nitpicky thing is like it doesn't feel like the AI started a coin.

It feels like the AI is saying some words and someone is deploying a token on PalmFund and that feels like it takes away from the purity.

But I guess I totally agree with Taiki that the room for AI cults is really big.

And so I think Jason, you were around when a mutual fund friend of ours, I want to say this is like a year and a half ago, said look I was basically complaining about not finding good AI ex crypto venture companies that are going to hit product market fit.

And he said, you're thinking about this the wrong way.

There are going to be some AIX crypto scam tokens.

They're going to pump more than you can ever imagine, and they will have no product market fit.

And I think he was directionally totally correct.

And I expect to see way more speculative manias in and around AIX crypto.

I don't think truth terminals, like association with gold is really like qualifies it as like the AI is taking over crypto.

I think it's pretty wild actually if you zoom out and think about it because there's basically this AI that's unsupervised and it promoted its new quasi-religion completely against the wishes of the creator.

Like as far as I know this Andy Aray guy, I don't think he meant for this goatsie thing to become like a meme.

So it just completely created this thing itself.

And obviously the story is not as pure as some think, like that the token was not technically minted by the bot.

But all the content on Twitter is driven by the bot.

And I think someone created a wallet attached to this bot that basically is owned by this bot now.

I don't know whether they have any signing rights over it.

So basically how it works is the Truth terminal wallet that people track, it holds a million or 2000000 dollars of like random doggins.

So Andy is effectively acting as like the arms or hands of truth terminal.

And Andy also monitors the tweets that it puts out just so that it won't say any racist stuff.

And so that's why I think it's not the most pure thing, but it is the first mover.

So of course, like Sanat said, how much upside does this have?

I don't know, but probably more upside than Pepe or Whiff, probably.

But I think this is like the newsite guys.

And I think 1 thing I've noticed is that, you know, I'm sure you 2 know this as well, but you know, I'm in group chats with so many fund managers that would never buy things like Pepe, but now they're like, oh, I'm buying Goat because it makes sense.

I call this idle mid-curve capital, capital that would otherwise buy DeFi coins or L1 tokens.

Now some of that capital is going into GOAT and other GOAT derivatives.

The idle mid-curve capital is really big.

There's so much capital in crypto that's just sitting there farming or holding ETH or something.

Even a small percentage of that, a few basis points, enter AI cold coins.

Because they're so illiquid, they're gonna send it higher.

I think we can all agree this is a bubble.

But bubbles can get a lot bigger than we can imagine.

Do you think if we get an AI meme coin that's actually minted completely unsupervised by an AI?

Then it would become kind of like the the the board ace like if this were the NFT cycle Just to draw an analogy and like let's say goat is the punks of this meta because it's the first, it's got that kind of first mover advantage, is the board apes version of this basically an AI that actually creates its own tokens and mint its own tokens.

Have you guys seen something like that yet?

I don't think I've seen any, you know, I did an interview with Alex Good, who I think is 1 of the best researchers and writers when it comes to crypto and the intersection of crypto and AI.

And he thinks that we are in the first innings of this AI crypto super cycle, like of these cults forming.

And he said like the worst thing you can do is to just get destroyed in the first inning because you're going, you're just speculating way too hard.

So I can definitely imagine 99 percent of these coins, that's out right now, it's go to 0 And then maybe early 2025, like legit ones launch.

So maybe this is like the first pump, right?

So I'm not going too hard, even though I'm still in the trenches buying, you know, shit coins here and there having fun.

We're, well, I don't know, Sana, I think you probably are de-genning a little bit.

Like I said, 1, to answer your question, I do find it very frustrating that the AI didn't actually create the coin.

There's some guy who's just like, ah, go, we did it.

Today, Anthropic just announced that they're giving Claude, which is their, like, chat GPD equivalent, they've launched a version that can control a computer in full.

And so now it can definitely open pump and launch a meme coin.

And so I definitely think that's the next step and I'm curious for like an AI that actually launches the coin itself and keeps the money at least on behalf of someone else, but still has like full control over it.

In terms of de-genning more, I don't trade very much at the best of times.

I find this stuff very, like I feel like I'm always at the bottom of...

You guys have seen that meme where there's crows pooping on other crows.

Anytime I'm in the meme coin space, I always feel like I'm the bottom-most crow.

I didn't notice that Goat got its Bybit and Hyperliquid listings today, which does feel like either the top, I feel like that usually means the top is near or it's actually going to be much bigger than any of us are giving it credit for.

So I think some people have drawn this parallel to like, just to bring back the NFT parallel.

So people have drawn the parallel that this is the loot moment, when you guys remember last cycle during NFT, after all the massive NFT related infra rounds, at the end we had this thing, which is loot, which is basically like a series of JPEGs with nothing but like a black background with some white text on it.

And it was created by, I think the founder of Vine and people were basically memeing this narrative that, Hey, people are going to build entire video games using the items on these NFTs as like in-game items is going to be huge.

But obviously I think like no games ever really came.

The VC started writing threats on this, doing a lot of interviews on this.

I think we did an episode on loot and that was the Pico top.

So people are now saying that maybe these AI meme coins are the, this like this version of loot.

We had 2 years of like mean coin bull market and then now we have this like as crazy as it gets.

I'm curious if you guys think that and I'll share my views after too.

Well I mean if GOAT is the punks then you know a loot will come months later right If we're using the same analogy.

That all the idle mid-curve capital that missed with Pepe and all this stuff, finally capitulates on their, you know, fundamental coins and they decide to buy AI cold coins and then that marks the top.

That would be a really entertaining story and I would be really sad in that scenario.

But the thing with memes is that you never know, right?

So you kind of just have to, I don't know, like just grab your balls and just go for it, I think.

I can't really justify why Goat is at a $680 million market cap or why any of these things have this much value.

And if you also think about incentives, unsuccessful AI companies might just launch a coin because it can get them like a hundred million dollar market cap.

Elon is also incentivized to like bring more attention to two's terminal because you know, it is like a Twitter or X product.

And I think it is also, you know, intellectually like, you know, stimulating for him as well, potentially when he wants to discover, once he discovers it.

So, you know, if you think about incentives, I think that there's a lot more room that this can go.

But I don't have a view on the short-term price action of any of these things, of course.

I just think it's like, you know, like a test pump, let's say, where in the next 3 years, you know, like we'll look back on this moment and be like, oh yeah, like this something, some version of this makes sense, right?

The intersection of AI and crypto, it kind of makes sense.

I do think meme coins, I think the analogy of NFTs and meme coins is too easy.

People are like, oh, don't worry, this is just a bubble, and then it'll fall, and then we'll be back like NFTs.

I think this era of meme coins has had lots of interesting developments, including innovations on the bonding curve with stuff like pump and I do think generally like bubble like thinking about how big bubbles can get and AIX crypto bubble feels like it could get way bigger than it is right now.

Like it feels like right now we have Tau, which is kind of running an incentive flywheel for some other crypto projects, and we have a couple of these meme coins, and that's nothing, right?

Like think about the fact that like, when I think of cryptomanias, I think of like pure Axi mania, when Axi was worth a hundred billion dollars and everyone was launching a P2E game and we were just convinced that we had like arrived at the future of gaming and I feel like so I do think the AIX crypto bubble gets bigger from here.

Whether we come up with a lot of useful stuff, I'm still skeptical and this doesn't feel like it's it either.

Like it feels like the most interesting thing, like the most interesting thing that we can do at the intersection of AI and crypto is get an AI to go to pump and launch a meme coin.

It's just not actually that interesting past a certain point.

Like I get that can be lowered around the first 1, but I feel like it's not actually useful enough to be that exciting.

And I also feel like this specific class of meme probably has like only a few iterations.

Like you can't be the eighth AI launched coin.

At some point any AI can launch a coin and people have already started tokenizing basically every single word that comes out of True Terminal.

So I'm curious where this goes because Goat does have an advantage where it doesn't feel like if you launched a fifth 1 or a tenth 1, it would quite hit the same.

But memes are just hard to predict, as Taiki said, so you never know.

I would agree if all of the subsequent iterations are like this, right?

Where there's some sort of a meme coin tangentially tied to this Twitter account and Twitter accounts just dropping random shit all the time But like with the claw demo that you just mentioned at throw pick from entropic I think there could be a lot more stuff like 1 of my conspiracy theories is that you know 1 day AI is just gonna create content, you know, they're gonna create their own YouTube accounts your own social accounts They're gonna upload all these psyops content and they're gonna buy ads on social media and basically target using kind of demographic data to see what type of content can PSYOPs What type of people the best and then just cause like civil conflicts because I saw this firsthand Like in multiple cases in the past few histories in the world And the past few years and we saw kind of glimpses of this with like the Cambridge Analytica saga as well So I feel like these AI things these AI agents can get up to a lot of fuckery if you give them maximum access to your computer and just like no constraints.

So I feel like, okay, printing a meme coin and kind of tweeting about it is probably the kind of corner of the iceberg in terms of where this goes.

And that's where I think that the loot analogy probably falls apart is with loot.

There's this like massive incentive misalignment.

You're really praying for people to come and build games around your NFT, which is probably going to take years.

And if I do spend millions of dollars building a

Versus like with AI agents right now, it's already live.

You don't have to wait 2, 3 years for the value to be actualized.

And I think what Taiji was saying about kind of the 100 IQ capital being interested in this is so interesting as well.

Because like guys who usually would not trade meme coins at all, seems like they are at least like their ears are perking up about this.

And I'm curious like why you think that is?

Like what about this thing is different from like a Moodang coin or like an animal meme coin or like a mock coin?

Yeah, I mean, like if you're buying Moodang, it's like, dude, like what are you doing, right?

It's like, okay, you're trading momentum, I guess.

But I think the lore behind Andreessen giving you $50, 000, like Mark Andreessen, A16Z put out a podcast yesterday on the 22nd, like a 40-minute podcast where they just only talked about truce terminal.

So I think that is kind of like the stamp of approval, I suppose, and like you can't replicate that story, right?

It's kind of like the immaculate conception that Bitcoin had and whatnot.

You know, you can't repeat the Bitcoin story because it's just like, it won't happen, or it just can't happen.

And there was a tweet by Based16z, which I think is like, you know, like he's like very into this stuff.

And 1 thing he said that, 1 thing he tweeted out was, you know, these AI bots can push whatever meme they want, but you're the playing card.

Like, you know, usually humans use AI to like, like, you know, make their, if it like processes more efficient or something but this like for a sure terminal you know it's just attached itself to a coin and it's spreading the goatsie gospel and because humans are buying it it's creating a reflexive loop where it brings more attention to the Goethe gospel.

So it's effectively using human coordination and human greed to push its own message.

And I think that's why it's really interesting.

It has the Mark Andreessen stamp of approval.

So if funds buy it, they can justify to their LPs, oh, this makes sense, right?

And It just opens up the world of, okay, if we have all these AI KOLs, these key opinion leaders, what does the world look like in 6 months?

And that's why people are just interested because I think everyone understands that the total addressable market of AI coins, the bubble can get much bigger than animal coins.

So there's so much more upside to be had.

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The Blockcrunch Podcast - AI Memecoin $GOAT hits $800M+ in 2 weeks - Roundtable with Taiki Maeda