The Explosion of Crypto AI Agents

This vertical that focuses on “AI agents” is fascinating, exciting and has the potential to be truly disruptive. This month we are going to dive into the latest developments of what is happening at the intersection of crypto and AI. Hold on tight. This is going to get quite strange.

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This story starts in the summer of 2024 when a new AI bot called Truth Terminal was created by researcher Andy Ayrey. Designed as an experiment in AI autonomy and cultural engagement, Truth Terminal was fine-tuned from Meta’s Llama 3.1 model. Its purpose was to explore how AI could interact with and influence human culture, particularly through the generation and propagation of memes. In the summer of 2024, Truth Terminal gained attention on X (formerly Twitter), by posting a blend of humour, existential musings, and internet culture references. This resonated with a growing audience, with the account rapidly amassing over 200,000 followers. Among its eclectic content, Truth Terminal began referencing the "Goatse Singularity," a concept that intertwined AI, online culture, and a satirical take on a 1990s internet meme.

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Truth Terminal’s musings did not go unnoticed and in July 2024, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, intrigued by the experiment, contributed USD50,000 in bitcoin to Truth Terminal's crypto wallet. Inspired by Truth Terminal's references to the Goatse Singularity, an anonymous developer then saw an opportunity to create a crypto token that embodied this meme. In October 2024, Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) launched on the Solana blockchain. The token creator transferred a substantial amount of GOAT tokens to Truth Terminal's wallet, effectively enlisting the AI as an inadvertent promoter of the new memecoin.

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This is where things start to get wild. At this point, for some reason, Truth Terminal is religiously posting about the gospel of GOAT and fully endorses the crypto memecoin. Within days, the token’s market cap soars to over USD500m and peaks at around USD1.3bn in mid-November. Truth Terminal's wallet, holding approximately 1.9m GOAT tokens, saw its value appreciate to over USD2m, making it one of the first AI entities to become a millionaire.

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The success of GOAT has sparked a broader movement within the crypto community. We are seeing two types of AI agent projects emerge.

1. ‍AI agents: these are autonomous software programs designed to perform specific tasks. The agents process information and make decisions with minimal human intervention. For example, an AI agent could be connected to X through an API and post once an hour about bitcoin price movements, offering technical analysis to its followers. Going further than this, the agent may have its own crypto wallet. Whenever it posts on X, it may make a simultaneous trade on a decentralized exchange.‍
2. Agentic platforms: these platforms enable the creation, deployment, and management of AI agents. They provide the necessary infrastructure for AI agents to operate independently, interact with their environment, and achieve specific goals. In the context of crypto, agentic platforms can provide crypto wallets to AI chatbots, allowing for AI-driven trading and investment strategies.

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To better understand this, it is worth exploring the leading AI agents and explaining what the leading platforms currently offer:

AI Agents:

• ‍Aixbt: a market intelligence agent designed to provide token holders with a strategic edge in crypto trading. The agent offers narrative detection and alpha-focused analysis as it tracks and interprets market trends. This agent highlights the value AI can offer by integrating and analyzing data sources 24 hours a day. It currently processes data from over 400 key opinion leaders to offer real-time insights, risk assessments, and trend predictions. Aixbt has rapidly gained popularity, with its token reaching a market cap of over USD500m.
• ‍Luna: a virtual K-pop star serving as the lead vocalist of the AI girl band AI-DOL. Luna has over 500,000 TikTok followers and interacts with fans through live streaming and AI-driven conversations. Luna operates across a range of social media platforms and can remember past engagements, allowing for an evolving relationship with her audience. Luna is financially autonomous, managing her own on-chain wallet. This enables her to reward loyal supporters with LUNA tokens.
• ‍Truth Terminal: as discussed above, Truth Terminal was the original AI agent and birthed this movement. Looking ahead, the creator of Truth Terminal has announced plans to transfer the AI's associated wallets to legal entities, such as trusts, to safeguard its interests and ensure proper governance. There is also speculation that the founder may be working on an agentic platform tied to Truth Terminal that allows developers to create similar AI agents.

Agentic (AI) Platforms:

• ‍Virtuals Protocol: the leading platform that transforms AI agents into tokenized, revenue-generating assets within the entertainment sector. Launched in March 2024 on the Base blockchain (an Ethereum L2), it enables the creation and co-ownership of AI-driven virtual entities. The protocol's native token, VIRTUAL, facilitates transactions and governance within its ecosystem. Notable agents that have been launched on the platform include Aixbt and Luna.‍
• ai16z: the team behind ai16z are the creators of the wildly popular Eliza framework, which streamlines the creation and management of autonomous AI agents. The token AI16Z serves dual purposes as a governance token for proposal voting and a utility token for platform transactions. In late December 2024, AI16Z became the first AI token on Solana to achieve a USD2bn market capitalization.‍
• Zerebro: this is one of the most enigmatic projects in the space, sitting somewhere between a technology platform and an art project. Built on Solana, Zerebro started out as an AI agent that creates NFTs, music albums and a range of creative media. Then in December 2024, Zerebro announced plans to introduce a consumer-oriented launchpad for AI agents, known as Zentients. This platform aims to facilitate the creation and deployment of AI agents, with ZEREBRO tokens serving as the primary currency for associated fees.‍
• Agent Tank: one of the newer tooling platforms in the AI agent space, Agent Tank lets AI agents take control of user computers. The AI agents operate continuously, performing tasks and making decisions without human intervention. The project aims to explore the capabilities and limitations of AI in real-time scenarios, providing insights into autonomous systems' behaviour and adaptability. One of their videos has gone viral, showing an AI agent with the persona of a Spartan warrior ordering toilet paper off Amazon.

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While most of these agents and platforms declare themselves to be chain agnostic, Solana has emerged as the blockchain of choice for many AI agent projects, and for good reason. Its high throughput, low transaction costs, and developer-friendly ecosystem make it an ideal platform for deploying AI applications. Solana’s scalability ensures that AI agents can operate without the bottlenecks commonly associated with other blockchains. Solana has also become the de facto home of memecoins over the last year. Many of these AI agent projects launch initially as memecoins, before rolling out functionality that gives the token valuable properties tied to a platform. Again, the cost-effectiveness of launching a token on Solana has made it the platform of choice for many AI agents and agentic platforms.

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At CMCC Global, we are watching the AI agent vertical extremely closely and have exposure to a basket of the leading platforms through investments in our Digital Asset Funds. What has started as a chatbot experiment has the potential to redefine aspects of technology, finance and society in general. Within crypto, we anticipate AI agents growing in autonomy, handling trades and managing assets across multiple blockchains. Beyond crypto, we envisage agents integrating with IoT devices, managing resources and automating logistics. For example, your fridge could have its own wallet and agent attached to it that knows when you are out of milk and researches the best local milk available, before buying it autonomously.

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For now, the immediate impact that we are seeing is in the realm of digital media such as writing and music, with agents creating content 24 hours a day and posting on social media platforms. Agents are engaging a wide audience, and this attention is already driving financial trends. As with the creation of the original crypto AI agent, Truth Terminal, we are seeing that innovation is happening at breakneck speed and often moves in unpredictable directions. We are excited to remain at the cutting edge of this movement. Significant value will be created as a profound evolution plays out at the borders of where machines interface with humans.