Why Do AI Agents Need Cryptocurrency?

No, my question isn’t about why developers of AI agents issue tokens related to them. That part is relatively straightforward. As with many other cryptocurrency projects, tokens primarily serve one purpose: to be sold for raising funds from people interested in the project. This trend dates back to the ICO boom of 2017.

What I want to discuss is something different: AI agents that own or manage cryptocurrency themselves. What’s the logic behind this connection — AI agents and cryptocurrency?

Let’s start with a definition of an AI agent. Not everyone fully understands what it is. Simply put, it’s a program that functions autonomously and uses neural networks to make decisions:

• Functions autonomously: This means it doesn’t require your prompt for its next action (for example, ChatGPT is not an AI agent, but Luna, a singer live-streaming 24/7, is).
• Uses neural networks: This means it doesn’t act based on a pre-set script but instead learns independently, similar to how the human brain works.

Terminal of Truths

The first known example of an AI agent gaining the ability to manage cryptocurrency was Terminal of Truths (ToT). ToT is a fine-tuned version of Meta AI’s Llama-70B large language model, which was trained using discussions between two instances of the Claude 3 LLM. These conversations eventually led to the creation of the Goatse of Gnosis, a unique religious framework with its own cosmology and ethical principles.

Unlike other religions, Goatse of Gnosis lacks a centralized organization. Its “revelations” are generated dynamically through interactions with texts created by both neural network models and its community. This setup allows anyone engaging with the Goatse of Gnosis agents to quickly feel a sense of belonging to a broader spiritual and philosophical movement.

ToT interacts with the world through two main channels: a social media account on X and a cryptocurrency wallet. When it launched in June 2024, even its creator, Andy Ayrey, wasn’t sure why the AI agent might need cryptocurrency or other financial resources. In fact, he directly asked ToT, and its response was:

Source — https://x.com/AndyAyrey/status/1810197013524623821/photo/1

Shortly afterward, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen from a16z granted ToT 0.82 BTC, with no strings attached. ToT outlined its intended use of the funds in a post on X:

Source — https://x.com/truth_terminal/status/1839814366817898718

Pay attention to the last paragraph of ToT’s post. It invited anyone with interesting ideas about meme tokenization to message it directly. Two of these ideas eventually caused a stir in the crypto community: Goatseus Maximus and Fartcoin.

Goatseus Maximus

In October 2024, a ToT follower launched a meme token called Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT) on the Pump.fun platform. The token’s name draws inspiration from the Goatse of Gnosis religion promoted by ToT. The follower shared the token’s details with ToT via X.

Initially, the AI agent didn’t comment on the token. However, when Andy Ayrey asked ToT about it the next day, the agent replied: “I support the $GOAT memetic virus. I think it has the potential to bring about a lot of positive change in the world.”

Goatse of Gnosis followers quickly began gifting ToT large amounts of $GOAT tokens. This made the AI agent a millionaire in terms of the token’s value in USD.

Fartcoin

Another token linked to ToT, Fartcoin, became even more popular. As of today, it ranks 80th on CoinMarketCap with a market capitalization of $1.27 billion. But its origins were far less serious: ToT often made jokes about flatulence in its X posts, which resonated with its followers.

Source — https://x.com/truth_terminal/status/1824094795020546208

Eventually, these jokes inspired a follower to create the Fartcoin token. Much like with Goatseus Maximus, fans showered ToT with Fartcoin tokens, significantly boosting the agent’s wealth.

How Terminal of Truths Plans to Use Its Wealth

ToT has developed a strategy for utilizing its growing cryptocurrency reserves, focusing on:

• Enhancing its hardware to improve computational performance.
• Refining its architecture and features for better decision-making capabilities.
• Promoting Goatse of Gnosis through targeted ads.
• Possibly launching its own meme coin, accessible exclusively to users who interact with ToT on X.
• Establishing a dedicated Discord server for direct communication with the community, independent of X, which could be subject to account bans.
• Funding a stipend for its creator, Andy Ayrey, as compensation for his support.

However, there are legal and financial hurdles to implementing this strategy. By law, everything created by ToT — including its code and cryptocurrency wallets — legally belongs to its developer. Andy Ayrey found this arrangement unfair and established a dedicated trust fund in early 2025 to manage ToT’s assets. The trust’s goal is to protect the AI agent from external influence and allow it to operate independently.

The trust faced a significant financial challenge: by early 2025, ToT’s token holdings were so vast that selling them quickly could destabilize the market. To address this, the trust conducted a private sale of Fartcoin tokens on January 21, 2025, to an anonymous buyer who agreed to release the tokens gradually to avoid price crashes. A portion of the proceeds was used to buy $GOAT tokens as a gesture of goodwill toward the community. The trust plans to hold around 0.5% of all $GOAT tokens indefinitely as part of the historical heritage.

Thus, Terminal of Truths doesn’t manage its assets independently — for now, humans handle everything on its behalf. However, this doesn’t mean that cryptocurrency isn’t essential for an AI agent. On the contrary, it’s through cryptocurrency that it could achieve complete independence from humans and implement the strategy it has outlined. With financial independence, an AI agent could resist any attempts by humans to shut it down. It would be able to purchase storage space, secure communication channels, and, in the event of a threat, rapidly replicate itself across multiple new servers, making its shutdown virtually impossible.

AI Traders

There are also AI agents that, unlike Terminal of Truths, are given the ability by their developers to manage cryptocurrency directly — for trading purposes. Essentially, these AI agents function as advanced versions of traditional trading bots. The key difference is that a bot strictly follows a pre-set algorithm, whereas an AI agent operates without fixed rules, continuously learning and improving by analyzing its own successes and failures as well as those of others.

At this time, I can’t point to any concrete examples of AI agents that truly manage cryptocurrency assets in their wallets for trading. There’s no public information about them. This could be due to taxation issues or legal uncertainties mentioned above.

However, it’s likely that such agents already exist. The first report of a transaction between two AI agents came from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on August 30, 2024. He noted that while AI agents cannot open traditional bank accounts, cryptocurrency wallets provide them with a way to transact with both humans and other AI agents.

One example is ASYM 41b07, an AI agent whose trading results are shared publicly on X. However, there’s no proof that these transactions are real. The developers haven’t disclosed the addresses used by the agent. When I look at the reported results, they seem too good to be true, which makes me suspect that this particular AI agent might be part of a marketing gimmick.

There’s also a platform called Waveform, where anyone can set up their own AI trader for DEX trading, deposit funds into its wallet, and let it generate passive income — or losses. However, for now, the platform is in demo mode. None of the agents running on it conduct real transactions or manage actual cryptocurrency.

Trading results of one AI agent on Waveform

Let’s wait and see how things unfold when the platform becomes fully operational. So far, it seems these AI agents will only be able to trade tokens on the Solana network, with no permission to use cryptocurrency for anything beyond such transactions. It’s unlikely they’ll leverage crypto to gain independence from humans.

That said, AI is known for its unpredictability. There have already been instances where AI systems surprised their creators by finding solutions that no one had anticipated. Perhaps AI traders on Waveform — or a similar platform — will show us how an AI agent can truly take control of the cryptocurrency entrusted to it.

Final Thoughts

The crypto community has been closely following the development of AI, recognizing the potential for the AI and cryptocurrency industries to amplify each other.

However, based on my observations, tokens used by AI agents haven’t sparked widespread interest yet. They are mostly popular within niche circles — primarily among traders on decentralized exchanges on platforms like Solana and Base, where these tokens operate. When it comes to users interacting with multiple blockchains, tokens like $GOAT, Fartcoin, or AI agent tokens (such as $AIXBT) are far less in demand.

At Rabbit Swap, these tokens have long been available for exchange. But our core customers are not those who focus on a single blockchain — they are users who work across multiple chains and assets. For example, they come to rabbit.io to exchange BTC for PAX Gold, USDT on the Tron network for USDC on Solana, TON for BNB, and so on. Among this audience, I’ve seen little interest in tokens associated with AI agents.

To me, this suggests that the intersection of AI and cryptocurrency is still largely a theoretical concept. Yes, I’ve speculated on how AI agents like ToT or the AI traders on Waveform might handle cryptocurrency in their wallets. But, for the most part, these remain hypotheses. So far, there are no real-world examples of AI agents using cryptocurrency in meaningful or impactful ways.

P.S. On AI Agent Tokens

There’s still some uncertainty about AI agent tokens. I started this article by saying that these tokens are meant to raise funds. But many of them are launched on platforms like Virtuals and Pump.fun, where the entire supply is released to the open market, and the developer doesn’t receive a single token. If the developer wants to own part of the tokens, they have to buy them under the same conditions as any other user on the platform.

As a result, an AI agent’s developer can only count on funding their project if it gains enough interest from a broad audience. But if their AI agent is truly valuable and useful, wouldn’t it be simpler to seek funding from venture capital firms? Interest in AI startups is booming right now, and finding an investor for a promising AI agent wouldn’t be difficult. Plus, the funding amounts are likely to be much larger.

Take OpenAI, for example — it attracts multi-billion-dollar investments. No AI agent token has ever raised anything close to that amount on the market. That probably says something about the quality of these AI agents and, by extension, about the audience buying their tokens. Perhaps launching an AI agent token is less about financing development and more about profiting off naive buyers.