Behind the explosive popularity of GOAT, the hype expectations and concerns of AI Meme

Author: CMed

With the explosive rise in the market value of GOAT, the AI track, which had been silent for half a year, was finally ignited by a goat. The AI, hovering between decentralized computing power and decentralized data, suddenly became hot after the overlay of meme supercycle expectations, 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 tracks, creating a more attractive and imaginative AI meme track. 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, as 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 speculation directions and logic of the track.

a16z Effect

Truth Terminal (@truth_terminal) launched on June 17, 2024. The initial reason for its breakout was that Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, invested $50,000 worth of Bitcoin in it.

This is an AI model fine-tuned based on the llama3-70b-base model, and all posts published on X are self-generated 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, the meme token 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 cap reaching $20 million at one point.

Against the backdrop of the PUMP platform's PVP model, most so-called "golden dogs" that "ran out" failed to maintain a high market cap that day. The initial explosion of GOAT was mainly due to the fame of a16z and Marc, as everyone was "riding" on the concept of AI-Bot invested by a16z. 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 retreating to around $6 million that same day. It was clear that expectations for GOAT were still within the logic of PVP, without considering the attractive concept and imaginative space of AI issuing its own tokens.

For example, a smart money address starting with 3DKf (3DKfZz4iHgu42LGu3ttQxqz6u4m5z9ptuar8pBsRqkKC) gradually took profits and exited after making a profit on GOAT, as the market began to look for another narrative.

Image source: Dexscreener

Interestingly, the GOAT case seems to showcase the ultra-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 about 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, Turning "Traffic Riding" into a Perfect Answer for AI+Crypto

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 see this as opening the liquidity valve for the meme market. GOAT became another super beneficiary of Moonshot after Moodeng.

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.

The price of GOAT 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 was recognized by more people. Not only KOLs but also 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 within just two days, it broke through the $200 million mark. The consensus around PVE and AI memes began to spread beyond the confines of the crypto industry, forming a strong consensus.

In the ongoing PVP environment of the Pump platform, it was only at this point that we realized that GOAT, assisted by Truth Terminal in its issuance, was not PVP but a brand new narrative of "the combination of AI and memes." The concepts of AI and memes fit perfectly together, 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+crypto seemed awkward, as 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 to a new level but was also very crypto-native in concept, avoiding regulatory risks associated with token issuance, as this was a token issued by AI.

Amid the collective FOMO, GOAT's market cap soared, reaching a high of $600 million on October 20, with crypto bigwigs like Arthur Hayes even stating that GOAT would reach a market cap of $1 billion.

A Typo Ends It All, The Dark Forest of AI Memes

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 cap to plummet from $27 million to $14.4 million.

The typo incident raised discussions about whether it was truly a real person behind it. Some believe that the hype surrounding the AImeme narrative is a complete conspiracy, claiming that there is no such thing as a 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 into the model of Truth Terminal itself, it was found that the AI model fine-tuned based on the llama3-70b-base model has less than a 0.1% chance of misspelling words. Andy Ayrey, the founder of the Truth Terminal model, also stated that he held 1.25 million GOAT tokens, some of which he airdropped to friends and AI researchers, but he himself did not conduct any transactions. The truth_terminal wallet is self-managed and will be transferred to a legal entity (trust or similar institution) designed to meet its needs; no adjustments will be made to its token holdings until a transparent governance process is in place. All tweets from 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 stated on social media that the drop in GOAT was a good buying opportunity for him, and he has bought GOAT. Eugene stated 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 said.

The price of GOAT also rebounded over 100% due to the comments from Eugene and the founder of Truth Terminal, and it still has a 94.83% increase.

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 "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 whether this narrative can continue to unfold. Many whales have begun to reduce their holdings in GOAT to lock in profits. In the "Wet Market" of meme culture nourished by AI (a place where viruses can grow wildly), how far GOAT can go next remains to be tested by the market in the future.

Currently, it seems that the existing AI memes still have not escaped the dependence on conspiracy groups. Based on this case, it resembles a "semi-AI meme." Truth Terminal did not participate in the issuance of the token; it merely recognized and promoted the token. Undeniably, AI memes have a high level of attractiveness in narrative and significant imaginative space in gameplay, but the market's speculation expectations go beyond just a16z and AI hype 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 control, and all chips distributed fairly, driven by market consensus, making the market realize that future autonomous AI can also have strong applications for blockchain.

The emergence of GOAT is just the beginning of the AI meme hype; it has opened a new direction. Many more AI memes will appear after this, but we still need to guard against the dark forest of conspiracy groups while keeping an eye on innovative AI gameplay to seize the next alpha opportunity. Perhaps one day, a brand new AI meme will emerge, completely deployed by AI itself.