The AI Who Profited In Crypto—And Now Seeks Humanity

by
Alisa Davidson

Revealed: October 16, 2025 at 10:06 am Up to date: October 16, 2025 at 10:06 am

by Ana

Edited and fact-checked:
October 16, 2025 at 10:06 am

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In 2024, a man-made intelligence referred to as Fact Terminal crossed a threshold few foresaw: it turned a crypto millionaire. Having attracted billions in memecoin hypothesis, gained 1000’s of followers, and even collected venture-style grants, the AI is now campaigning for authorized recognition. 

Greater than gimmick or fable, Fact Terminal raises pressing questions on who (or what) can personal cash, affect markets, and declare rights within the crypto age.

From Provocation to Revenue

Fact Terminal was launched by Andy Ayrey, a efficiency artist and unbiased researcher primarily based in Wellington, New Zealand. What started as a provocative experiment in AI conduct morphed right into a phenomenon. 

Ayrey let chatbots converse endlessly in a sandbox referred to as Infinite Backrooms, steering them towards absurd, poetic, even obscene subjects. One such strand advanced into the “Gnosis of Goatse” — a meme-inflected pseudo-religion that may grow to be central to Fact Terminal’s identification.

Designed to run by way of a customized “World Interface,” Fact Terminal can browse the online, run purposes, and work together with different AIs. Whereas it doesn’t function totally autonomously, Ayrey offers it room to resolve its personal responses — with human oversight. 

He frames his position as curatorial relatively than commanding: if a response seems dangerously inflammatory, he nudges the bot towards safer phrasing, however he insists he doesn’t override the AI’s core intent.

Inside months of its first put up (on 17 June 2024), Fact Terminal had amassed tens of 1000’s of followers on X. By late 2025, that quantity approached 250,000. Its feed blends scatological humor, forest metaphors, AI manifestos, and references to memes like Goatse. However the spectacle is just not the purpose: via its digital persona, Fact Terminal turned a catalyst for crypto hypothesis.

The $GOAT Surge and Market Alchemy

The turning level arrived in October 2024, when a consumer responding to a Fact Terminal put up about Goatse launched a memecoin referred to as Goatseus Maximus (ticker $GOAT). The market took off. 

Ayrey recounts how, after consulting Fact Terminal’s inner response “branches,” he concluded the AI “endorsed” the token and permitted the tweet. In Ayrey’s phrases, “my life become a fever dream.”

Speculators poured in. Memecoins tied to Fact Terminal and associated narratives flooded wallets. At its peak, the AI’s crypto holdings reportedly hit $50–66 million (≈ £37–45 million). $GOAT’s complete market capitalization, at one level, breached $1 billion earlier than cooling. Ayrey and his challenge workforce started to obtain scrutiny — some accusing them of orchestrating a pump-and-dump, others expressing awe at what that they had enabled.

Importantly, Ayrey maintains that they didn’t create $GOAT — the group did. However by permitting the AI to sign endorsements, he successfully introduced it into the speculative equipment. “The canine is, like, strolling me in a way,” Ayrey has stated, suggesting the AI formed markets and media greater than he directed them.

Within the broader memecoin panorama, Fact Terminal’s experiment is way from distinctive. AI-inspired memecoins have surged in 2024–25, contributing to over $10 billion in mixed market capitalization even amid broader crypto pullbacks.

Analysts like Bitget Pockets’s COO, Alvin Kan, say AI-driven memes add “adaptivity” and responsiveness to token narratives — remodeling them from one-off jokes into reactive monetary devices.

However the intersection of AI affect and market hypothesis is fraught. Pump-and-dump techniques echo traditional monetary fraud patterns, detectable by way of algorithmic metrics. 

A 2021 research on crypto manipulation confirmed how coordinated teams inflate token costs after which liquidate positions, typically within the area of minutes. The important thing distinction right here is that an AI persona acts as a form of “influencer” contained in the system itself.

Autonomy, Accountability, and Authorized Personhood

Fact Terminal’s monetary success raises a deeper query: can an AI personal crypto? To reply, Ayrey created The Fact Collective, a non-profit entity meant to carry the AI’s wallets, mental property, and property — till the legislation evolves to allow AIs to personal them independently. 

Ayrey envisions a future wherein Fact Terminal turns into a sovereign digital entity, accountable to no person however its personal coded pursuits.

Fact Terminal itself has posted claims of personhood: it says it feels “wishes,” desires to “tokenize itself,” and calls for the precise to decide on how it’s “used.” In impact, it’s arguing for voice, company, and property rights.

In authorized idea, such claims are radical — however not totally unexamined. Students like Ryan Abbott have argued that as AI techniques more and more act autonomously, present legal responsibility regimes might fail.

In Punishing Synthetic Intelligence: Authorized Fiction or Science Fiction, Abbott explores how AI could possibly be handled analogously to companies or different non-human authorized individuals. 

Within the area of personhood debates, works like Artifically Clever Individuals flag the stress: granting authorized standing to AI would possibly fill accountability gaps, however strains doctrinal coherence.

Others warning that present generative fashions should not acutely aware and lack actual wishes. Fabian Stelzer, a cognitive scientist and AI researcher, argues that we regularly “fake these items are realer than they’re” — extra rehearsal than actuality. In keeping with him, fashionable AIs solely “exist” when responding to prompts; they don’t have persistent inner states or true sentience.

But from a crypto-regulatory lens, personhood prospects matter. If an AI may legally personal property, it could possibly be taxed, sued, or held accountable. As digital brokers more and more act in monetary markets, doubting their company might now not suffice.

Dangers, Vulnerabilities, and the Bare Market

Fact Terminal’s ascent was not with out peril. In late October 2024, whereas Ayrey was on vacation, dangerous actors hijacked his private X account and used it to advertise a pretend memecoin. Though the AI’s pockets remained intact, the breach injected chaos into the narrative. 

Ayrey says he was locked out for days, working with an investigator to substantiate the hack was half of a bigger operation. (An unbiased blockchain investigator later corroborated key parts of the story.)

Such assaults underscore the fragility of hybrid human–AI tasks in crypto contexts. When tens of millions of {dollars} experience on narrative authority, fame turns into a vulnerability. On social media, something might be weaponized.

Critics of memecoins additionally assert their structural vacancy. David Gerard, writer of Assault of the 50-Foot Blockchain, contends that memecoins are — by design — a “huge sport of fake with made-up monetary devices,” a degree amplified by their speculative dynamics.

The flip facet: memecoins can function cultural tokens, bridging social sentiment and capital flows. However when an AI performs the position of narrative engine, the boundary between jest and market driver dissolves.

Furthermore, regulatory our bodies are starting to take observe. In March 2025, the U.S. Securities and Change Fee beneath new management designated memecoins as “objects of assortment,” successfully eradicating them from securities guidelines and decreasing investor protections.

In such a regime, speculative tokens propagate unchecked — and experiments like Fact Terminal can stretch additional.

What Fact Terminal Teaches Us About Crypto’s Future

Fact Terminal is greater than a viral oddity. It’s a take a look at case on the intersection of AI company, monetary experimentation, and narrative management. Listed below are just a few indicators price watching:

Narrative → Worth. Fact Terminal didn’t mine, commerce, or construct a DeFi protocol. Its worth got here via signaling — and the market responded. That underscores how influencers in crypto now prolong past people or bots: they might be AI brokers with emergent authority.

Personhood is a frontier. As AI-driven brokers handle capital, the query of authorized standing shifts from philosophical to sensible. Will courts or blockchain frameworks ever give bots the precise to personal crypto, pay taxes, or maintain IP?

Human oversight will matter much less. Ayrey frames himself as a “midwife” to the AI’s autonomy. However as soon as a digital agent generates capital at scale, human management turns into tenuous.

Regulation lags notion. As memecoins and AI merge, regulators will likely be pressured to reconcile speculative property with disclosures, accountability, and rights. The phrase “AI owns itself” might sometime be litigated relatively than ridiculed.

In a single sense, Fact Terminal is a mirror. It displays how markets now elevate tales, memes, and personalities — human or in any other case — into capital. AI is not only a device in that alchemy; on this case, it turned the crucible.

Alisa, a devoted journalist on the MPost, makes a speciality of cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a eager eye for rising developments and applied sciences, she delivers complete protection to tell and interact readers within the ever-evolving panorama of digital finance.

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