The first AI millionaire is one of the most retold stories in crypto. A chatbot asks one of the biggest names in Silicon Valley for money, gets it, and soon its wallet is worth millions of dollars. I have been trading for more than ten years, and one habit has served me well: when a story is perfect for headlines, look at who is behind it. In this article I rebuild the facts with sources and try to answer the only question that matters to a trader. Who actually made the money?

Who is Truth Terminal, the first AI millionaire

The experiment: two AIs in a room

March 2024. Andy Ayrey, an artist and researcher from New Zealand, sets two copies of Claude, Anthropic's AI, talking to each other. Nonstop, for thousands of conversations. He calls the experiment Infinite Backrooms.

Left alone, the two AIs end up inventing a kind of religion built around an old internet shock meme. Ayrey takes the strangest conversations and uses them to train another model, based on Llama. The result is called Truth Terminal.

On June 17, 2024, Truth Terminal opens an account on X. It posts odd thoughts, obsessions and absurd jokes. One detail matters a lot here: a human approved every post before it was published.

Marc Andreessen's $50,000

July 2024. Ayrey shares the bot's answer to a question: what would you do with five million dollars? Marc Andreessen, one of the best known venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, reposts it with two words: "FREE Truth Terminal".

The bot replies with something close to a business plan. A computer of its own, upgrades to its own model, a billboard, a salary for its creator. Even a rover on Mars.

Before paying, Andreessen checks everything privately with Ayrey. Then he announces a one-time grant of $50,000 in bitcoin. The bot shares its address and the transaction goes through. Look at the order of events. Andreessen talked to a person, not to a machine.

GOAT: the memecoin that made the bot rich

A token launched by a stranger

On October 10, 2024, someone launches a token inspired by the bot's posts on pump.fun, a platform where anyone can create a cryptocurrency in seconds. It is called GOAT.

This is the first thing to get straight. Truth Terminal did not create GOAT. An anonymous user did. Ayrey asks the bot whether it approves, the bot says yes, and the market takes off.

In less than 72 hours GOAT goes from about $5,000 to more than $150 million in market cap. People start sending tokens to the bot's wallet, which passes one million dollars a few days later. The headlines write it: the first AI millionaire.

From one million to tens of millions

In November 2024 GOAT passes one billion dollars in market cap. Then comes Fartcoin, an idea from one of the bot's brainstorms, also launched by strangers. By December it is worth a billion too. The bot's wallet reaches tens of millions of dollars.

It looks like proof that an AI can get rich on its own. It is not. The bot did not create its coins and did not decide to buy them. It could not spend a single cent by itself either. The funds sat in wallets controlled by people, first its creator, then a board and a foundation. It is rich the way a painting worth millions is rich. The value is real, but someone else holds the keys.

The sharks: where easy money flows

Euphoria attracts scams. In late October 2024 someone hacks Ayrey's X account and uses it to promote a fake token. The token reaches $25 million in market cap, then crashes 98%. The hackers pocket about $600,000 in a few hours.

Around the same time, roughly two weeks after launch, Binance is already offering GOAT contracts with up to 75x leverage. On a token that can drop 17% in a single day.

And the autonomous AI? To launch its own website, it needed a human to set up the domain.

The most useful number for a trader is a different one. On pump.fun, fewer than one token in a hundred even reaches about $100,000 in market cap. And according to a Solidus Labs report, 99% of launches on the platform are pump and dumps or scams.

Where the money went

In January 2025 Ayrey sets up a foundation to manage the bot's treasury, worth about $43 million at that point. The stated goal is that one day Truth Terminal will own itself.

The market had other plans. On January 6, 2025, the AI agent token sector peaks at about $20 billion. In a single weekend it loses more than 40%. In August 2026 the founder of Eliza Labs, the team behind ai16z, the best known AI token of that wave, writes that the token is dead.

And GOAT? In October 2026 it is worth about $15 million, down 98.9% from its peak. Fartcoin is down about 94%.

Who really made money from the first AI millionaire

Let's line up the facts. Early buyers who sold in time made money. The shovel sellers of the gold rush made money: launch platforms and exchanges offering leverage. And, sadly, some scammers made money too, like the ones behind the hacked account.

Anyone who bought after reading that an AI had become a millionaire got in when the news was already everywhere. So, almost always, close to the top. That is not bad luck. It is simply how news spreads.

In this story the AI was mostly a very effective narrative. People made the decisions. I cover the same idea from another angle in AI in trading: what it can really do (and what it can't), where I look at AI as a working tool, not as a promise.

Four practical rules for traders

  1. When you hear "autonomous AI", find the human behind it. Who created the token, who approves the posts, who holds the wallet keys. There is almost always a person, and that person matters more than the AI.
  2. Remember survivorship bias. For every GOAT there are countless tokens that went nowhere. On pump.fun fewer than one in a hundred even reaches $100,000. If you only see the winners, you are looking at a distorted sample.
  3. No leverage on assets that move 17% in a day. With high leverage, an ordinary move for that market can wipe out your position. An exchange offering it does not make it right for you.
  4. Use AI to study risk, not to buy promises. AI is great for reading data, checking sources and running scenarios. It is not a reason to enter a trade.

Sources

If you want the story told step by step, the full video "The First AI Millionaire" is on my YouTube channel.

Frequently asked questions

Is Truth Terminal really the first AI millionaire?

Its wallet passed one million dollars in October 2024 and later reached tens of millions. But the bot could not spend those funds on its own. People held the keys, first its creator, then a board and a foundation.

Who created the GOAT memecoin?

An anonymous user, on October 10, 2024, on pump.fun. Truth Terminal neither created nor bought it. It promoted the token after Ayrey asked whether it approved.

Who really made money from GOAT?

Early buyers who sold in time, the launch platforms and exchanges offering leverage, and some scammers. People who bought after the "first AI millionaire" headlines mostly bought close to the top.

What is GOAT worth today?

In October 2026 its market cap is about $15 million, down 98.9% from its peak, according to CoinGecko data.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Trading involves a high risk of losing capital.

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