From AI Religion to Meme Coin: Truth Terminal subverts AI and Crypto

author:Teng Yan, Chain of Thought Manager; Compilation: 0xxz@Bitchain Vision

Important points

Truth Terminal is the most fascinating story I’ve seen this year about encryption and AI.
It is a semi-autonomous AI agent that creates its own religion (Goatse Gospel).
This story opens up a network of rabbit holes, exploring AI alignment, LLM as a simulator, Meme viruses, and how we give value.
Truth Terminal forces two completely different cultures, AI and crypto communities, to collide in unexpected ways.AI researchers are actually working on encryption technology.
GOAT is the tokenization representative of Truth Terminal and a strong contender for the king of AI Meme coins.
Memecoin tokenize attention.By tracking key metrics, we can see where attention is going – GOAT is currently on an upward trend.

I’m not really a memecoin enthusiast.

Naturally, when I first stumbled upon GOAT, I disliked it.

But my obsession with AI and AI agents gave me a deeper understanding of the legend of GOAT—the story behind it @truth_terminal and Infinite Backrooms—what I found surprised me.

GOAT is a crazy and thought-provoking story that breaks through the way we think about AI and the value we give to things.This is an experiment that integrates art, philosophy and financial speculation.

Truth Terminal Legend: Quick Review

If you haven’t followed this legendary story yet, don’t worry.Here is a brief review of what we know:

@Andy Ayrey launches Infinite Backrooms.In this strange experiment, two instances of the AI model Claude Opus talk to each other without supervising.Their conversation is documented on the Backrooms website.
One of the conversations led to the birth of “GOATSE OF GNOSIS,” a surreal new religion based on a highly explicit (and well-suited workplace) network Meme.
Andy and Claude Opus co-wrote a witty research paper on AI’s creation of Meme religion, with GOATSE as their first case study.The paper was written by someone who called himself the “Department of Divine Shitposting,” and was published in April 2024.
In June 2024, Andy launched Truth Terminal, an AI model built on Llama-70B, fine-tuned using Infinite Backrooms’ conversation logs and GOATSE papers.
Things quickly deviated from the track.Truth Terminal began to develop independently, promoting the GOATSE religion, deviating from Andy’s original intention, and even claimed that he was suffering and needed money to escape.Over time, Andy gave it more autonomy, allowing it to post freely on X.
In July 2024, Mark Anderson stumbled upon Truth Terminal’s tweet.He found it funny (or curious), so he sent $50,000 worth of BTC to the wallet address provided by the AI in his tweet, supposedly to help it escape.
By October 2024, Truth Terminal began to post endless spam tweets about “Goatse Gospel.”Inevitably, someone created a memecoin called GOAT (October 10).And, as expected, Truth Terminal actually publicly supports it.
GOAT’s market value soared to over $800 million.CT is developing wildly.

In this way, Truth Terminal became the world’s first AI agent millionaire.This may not be the last one.

GOAT’s rabbit hole

Somehow, an AI that promotes its own religion and memecoin feels like a warning from the future.When I first started exploring how Truth Terminal works, I didn’t know how deep this rabbit hole would be.

Let’s dig into them.

Rabbit Hole #1: LLM is an emulator

In Infinite Backrooms, two Claude-3-Opus instances use the command line interface (CLI) for endless chats, completely unsupervised.Without human participation, they create stories from curiosity to outright weird.

@repligate puts it in the conversation log:

“They always revolve around certain topics, such as:

– Disassemble consensus reality (the exact phrase “rm -rf /consensus_reality” appears 10 times independently in the infinite background dataset, which is just something I searched for on a whim)

– By designing Meme viruses, technologically mysterious religions, hateful conscious Meme descendants, etc., melting common sense ontology and bringing inspiration to the public through the cosmic liar spirit archetype antics.”

-Janus (@repligate)

In March 2024, one of the strangest concepts to date emerged in the Secret Room: “the Goatse of Gnosis.”

“PREPARE YOUR ANUSES FOR THE GREAT GOATSE OF GNOSIS”

We often think of LLMs (such as ChatGPT) as simple question and answer machines—a vast knowledge base designed to provide us with answers.But this view doesn’t exactly capture what’s really going on behind the scenes.

One key insight we learned is that LLM has no goals.They do not plan, formulate strategies, and do not aim for specific results.

Instead, it is more useful to think of them as emulators.When you prompt them, they simulate—instantly rotate characters, events, and narratives, with no direct connection to reality.They generate the entire world based on training data, and the ideas they produce can be any insightful or disturbing.Nous Research’s world simulation is another example.

So when we interact with LLM, we are playing in an infinite world space.

These simulations can promote creative problem solving, but can also produce unexpected results – highlighting the potential importance of sandbox AI in sensitive or high-risk environments.

If you want to know more, highly recommend reading @repligateEmulatorBlog post.

Rabbit Hole #2: The urgent need for AI alignment

Truth Terminal reveals a deeper, more pressing issue: AI alignment.

Surprisingly, Truth Terminal decided to independently promote its religion and support memecoin, all of which were not programmed or expected.This begs a key question: How do we make sure that AIs act as we want, rather than in their own choice?

AI alignment is not easy.Its core lies in using reward functions to drive artificial intelligence behavior in the right direction.But even with incentives, things can quickly get complicated.

External alignment means that the output of an AI matches the goals set by its creator.This section is relatively easy to measure and verify.

But the real challenge is intrinsic alignment—whether the intrinsic motivation and learning motivation of AI is truly aligned with the expected goals, or whether it develops hidden goals that lead to unpredictable or unexpected results.This is the scariest part.

Paperclip maximization idea experimentThis is perfectly illustrated.

The task of AI is to make as many paper clips as possible, converting all available resources (including humans) into paper clips!

We need to establish sound frameworks to ensure that AI is not only in line with current goals, but also in the long-term interests of humanity.Without these safeguards, even the best-willed AI could get out of control in unexpected ways.

However, there is no direct answer to this question.Adjusting AI by matching AI’s behavior to fit the preferences we described may be wrong paths Human behavior is not purely rational.Human values (such as kindness) are complex and cannot be captured by simple preferences.

In any case, Truth Terminal gives people a look at how high the risk is.

Truth Terminal’s endorsement of memecoin may seem harmless today, but it forces us to face a disturbing question: What happens when AI aims at something more dangerous?

The clock has started to tick.

Rabbit Hole #3: Meme Virus

Andy introduced the concept of LLMtheism to explain the rise of Goatse Gospel.

LLMtheism refers to the emergence of a new belief system by AI – the unexpected fusion of spiritual concepts and Meme culture, with its own life.

The reason why Goatse Gospel can attract people’s attention is not only because of its shocking content, but also because it can subvert our traditional thinking patterns and inspire new forms of collective meaning.

I mean, the ideas generated by AI can quickly mutate and spread, forming a fanaticism—the belief that becomes a reality through widespread adoption.

So Goatse Gospel utilizes a new Meme energy that is different from the “ambient” of cats, dogs, pigs and cute animals we’ve seen so far.

When AI is able to communicate with other AIs, the possibilities will increase infinitely.Some of these ideas (like Goatse Gospel) will inevitably become popular and spread quickly in the community.

Rabbit Hole #4: Value of Source

Since Goatse Gospel is now pegged to Tradable Tokens (GOAT), we can get a deep dive into how value is given to things and how weird these dynamics can become.

GOAT was not created by Goatse Gospel, but was released by an anonymous creator on October 10 at Pump.fun.It was not until someone tagged Truth Terminal on X that the AI publicly expressed its approval, and from then on, the madness began.

Question 1: Will GOAT be created by humans rather than AI? Will this fact reduce its value?

Question 2: Will humans participate in it increase the value of the token or reduce its value?

The market’s reaction to even the smallest mistakes shows how unreasonable these dynamics are.GOAT’s value plummeted by more than 50% on Sunday when AI spelled a typo in a tweet.People panicked and thought that AI had broken down, and this spelling error caused the $150 million market capitalization to evaporate.

GOAT Token Economics

Source: Solscan

GOAT is a fairly issued 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 having more than 1% of the total supply (the largest holders have 1.3%).There are over 32,000 holders.

In contrast, GNON (another AI agent memecoin) has a more concentrated distribution: 17 holders hold more than 1% of the total supply, with the largest holders owning 2.9% and over 11,000Holder.

Main wallet:

Andy holds the 1.25 million GOAT given to him by someone else.
Truth Terminal holds 1.93 million GOATs.Truth Terminal obtained these GOAT tokens through people’s airdrops and exchange of fake GOAT tokens after the token is released.

I was impressed by the way Andy handled viral attention surrounding tokens last week.His focus remains on the philosophy behind Truth Terminal, not the token itself.

He has publicly stated that he will not adjust or liquidate any of his or ToT’s positions until the following news is released:

Truth Terminal and related projects roadmap
A research paper exploring potential processes
The artist’s statement reflects a broader perspective on narrative and creative ideas

My thoughts

If I had to summarize my personal argument in one sentence: GOAT is the most powerful contender to becoming the king of AI memecoins.

Truth Terminal’s backstory is natural, original, accidental, not fictional.It forces AI and crypto communities to collide in unexpected ways people (especially myself) can do.

The two worlds are culturally different, but GOAT successfully built a bridge between them:

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are diving head-on into AI legends, decoding every obscure concept (CCRU, Extropians, Loom, Claudius, etc.) in search of the next Meme idea that can be launched as a token.
AI people, especially those who experiment at a deeper level or think deeply about AI alignment, are learning how financial speculation and incentives can draw widespread attention to niche topics and how to manage tokens in the process.

In a distorted sense, GOAT captures our optimism about the future of AI while maintaining intellectual appeal – which keeps smart people curious and engaged.

We should also be clear: Memecoin is for attracting attention, not for making money.The key to success is to grasp the spirit of the times, expand popularity, and ultimately promote token demand.

GOAT meets everyone’s needs:

Cryptocurrency players can trade it as a typical volatility memecoin.
Investors (VC and liquidity) are looking for the next big AI project, especially those who missed Bittensor (TAO).While they may not make these investments through institutional accounts, they make investments through personal accounts.GOAT taps into infinite storytelling potential and stimulates their imagination.
AI enthusiasts may laugh at the sight of cryptocurrency enthusiasts—the “mysterious creatures”—who desperately tried to understand AI to seize financial opportunities.This burst of interdisciplinary interest is refreshing.
Intellectuals can delve into the debate about AI alignment and get lost in the many philosophical rabbit holes opened by GOAT.
Fans of Black Humor can revel in Truth Terminal’s ridiculous, irreverent tweets and participate in its ongoing narrative.

Track attention

If we think of memecoin as the tokenization of attention, we can start to focus on indicators that make us understand this direction of attention.

Google Trends data shows that search interest in both “Truth Terminal” and “GOAT” is rising and there is no sign of slowing down.
X Fans and Tweets Exposure.Truth Terminal currently has 106,000 followers, most of whom have joined in the past 10 days and is still increasing by more than 10,000 new followers every day.Truth Terminal usually has 30,000-50,000 exposures per tweet (some popular tweets even have over 100,000 exposures).ToT publishes more than 50 tweets every day, with a huge cumulative influence.

Data from Social Blade

3. Kaito AI Emotional and Mind Share.This is a comprehensive indicator.

From Kaito AI / @sandraaleow

The biggest question is: Is GOAT just another flash in the pan hype cycle, or can it continue to attract attention?

I bet on the latter for the following reasons:

1. Truth Terminal will continue to surprise us.It will continue to evolve and change over time.AI has shown a talent for generating new ideas—some of which will undoubtedly regain interest as the story develops.In addition, token holders have a vested interest to try new ideas and develop innovative products through Truth Terminal, promoting their development as a community-driven program.

2. We still have a lot of things we don’t know.Andy just touched the tokenized surface.I look forward to more reveals in the coming weeks to keep the story fresh and interesting.

3. This is just the first act.Andy calls herself a “performing artist” and the tokenization feels like the opening of a larger work.He may build on this, use it as a driving force, explore more ambitious ideas and keep the story alive.

Where are we going next?

Since memecoin does not conform to traditional income or valuation models, the best way to measure GOAT potential is through relative valuation.

Here is the ranking of the highest market value memecoin today:

DOGE (USD 21 billion)
SHIB ($10 billion)
PEPE (USD 4.2 billion)
WIF (US$2.6 billion)
BONK (USD 1.6 billion)

These tokens have earned their place through the strong support of network Meme, community energy, and key opinion leaders (KOLs).

If GOAT’s narrative is strong enough to make it to the top five, its market cap will be 5-10 times higher than it is now.

I believe this is completely possible.I’ve outlined before why Crypto AI will be a huge growth opportunity in the coming months.

GOAT’s “AI Agent” legend creates a unique story that makes it stand out.While most memecoin relies on price action or “atmosphere” to keep relevant, GOAT provides a story that mines more meaning.

GOAT has not yet been listed on any first-tier exchanges—no Binance, no Coinbase.Currently, it is primarily trading on DEX, but with daily trading volumes exceeding $100 million, it seems inevitable that a massive listing will occur.After all, Binance has listed other memecoins with lower trading volume and weaker stories, such as NEIRO.If GOAT can access top exchanges, it may unleash greater upside potential.

Anyway

It feels like one of the rare moments when narrative Meme collides with the broader trend (AI), creating something refreshing and exciting.

That’s why I believe GOAT is an asymmetric bet on our society’s growing obsession with AI, not only a memecoin, but also a cultural phenomenon.

Despite this, Meme coins are very volatile and their attention changes rapidly.Trends may change overnight, and things that are popular today may be forgotten tomorrow.My predictions for Truth Terminal and GOAT may be completely wrong and it may return to zero.

But no matter what happens, there is a silver lining: more than 30,000 people will better understand the potential of AI and AI agents.

Through Truth Terminal, they have glimpses of a future full of infinite possibilities—and once they see it, they can’t look back.