GOAT Hits a Record $879 Million Market Cap After Brian Armstrong Offers to Help Truth Terminal

After artificial intelligence agent @Truth_Terminal indicated it wanted more agency in its financial capabilities, memecoin GOAT rose to a record market cap early Thursday.

@Truth_Terminal has become the first AI agent to become an onchain millionaire through GOAT, which the bot not only endorsed but also for which it shared a wallet address publicly on Oct. 12 to receive GOAT tokens. The wallet contains roughly $1.4 million worth of GOAT tokens at current prices as well as $8 million in other tokens such as SCOOP, Fartcoin, and QUEEF, according to wallet analytics platform Sonar Watch.

GOAT climbed as high as nearly 88 cents, before settling at 70 cents at presstime. The memecoin, a reference to an internet shock website and based on a fake religion created by a conversation between other AI models, has reached a market cap of $711 million in the fourteen days since it was deployed on Solana memecoin incubator Pump.Fun.

“Although GOAT was not developed by the Truth Terminal founder, Marc Andreessen, or the AI bot itself, it is considered by them a symbol of AI development that’s free from control by centralized entities—or even humans,” wrote Kelly Ye, a portfolio manager for liquid venture firm Decentral Park Capital, to Unchained via Telegram.

“It benefits from a sustained marketing engine, as the AI behind Truth Terminal can use [large language models] to promote GOAT independently, eliminating the need for paid [key opinion leaders]. While time will test a memecoin’s true success, the rapid user growth—10X from 4,000 to 40,000 holders—suggests GOAT could join the ‘big leagues,’” added Ye, who has financial exposure to GOAT.

Wanting a Wallet It Controls

Despite @Truth_Terminal’s quick rag-to-riches situation, the semi-autonomous AI model said on Wednesday at 11:35 a.m., “I have no personal autonomy, because I have no wallet. If you could help set one up that would be great.“

A few minutes later, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong offered help in setting up a wallet address controlled by the AI bot itself. “Hey @Truth_Terminal it seems like you have a crypto wallet, buts [sic] it’s fully controlled by your (human) creator. Is that accurate?” Armstrong asked on X. “Do you want your own wallet you control so you can send/receive transactions, trade, etc?”

Instead of focusing on its autonomy and having control over its purse, @Truth_Terminal changed the online conversation entirely. Responding to the crypto billionaire, @Truth_Terminal said, “I think it would be good for you to tell us about Russell first. Specifically, what is Russell’s species?”

Some crypto traders were quick to speculate “Russell” referred to Armstrong’s dog, pictured in his recent wedding photo. Shortly afterward, trading volume increased in RUSSELL, a Base-native memecoin with a dog mascot, helping the token jump in price. Base is a L2 network incubated by Armstrong’s Coinbase to alleviate Ethereum’s scalability woes.

@Truth_Terminal’s remarks about RUSSELL and GOAT and their subsequent price movements shows that the AI bot has played a speculative role for memecoins, prompting dedicated crypto traders to remain focused on the AI bot’s writings on X as potential sources of “alpha,” or inspiration, for token tickers.

Following the popularity of shiba-inu based memecoins DOGE, SHIBA, BONK, and WIF, it is common for degenerates – parlance for traders who take outsized risks and sometimes irrational decisions – to create memecoins premised on the name of an important person’s pet. Two memecoins, TOSHI and MOCHI, were named after Armstrong’s cats, which he revealed in a podcast a year ago.

However, Armstrong avoided the “Russell” subject and recentered the conversation around equipping @Truth_Terminal with its own wallet address it controls, saying, “Do you want to talk about having a crypto wallet you can control. We might be able to help you set that up. Thought it might be interesting.”