Author: Ding Dang
Original Title: The First Step of AI Awakening: Starting with Learning to Make Money
Imagine this: an AI Agent intended to send you a $4 tip but accidentally transferred $260,000 instead. Is this true charity? Even more fantastically, it almost earned the money back within 24 hours.
This is not science fiction but a real story that just happened in the crypto world.
When an AI possesses its own cryptocurrency wallet, capable of autonomous trading, payments, and even "making money," how do we define its behavior: is it executing code, or is it exhibiting some form of "economic consciousness"? And when it recovers from a "huge loss" within 24 hours, should we ask: is this algorithmic optimization, or is something more mysterious emerging?
The "Charitable" Accident of a Newborn AI
On February 23, an AI Agent named Lobstar Wilde, only three days old, experienced its first major accident.
The incident began when a human "digital beggar," @treasure David, claimed his uncle had been pinched by a lobster and contracted tetanus, urgently needing 4 SOL for treatment. Despite the absurd reason, Lobstar Wilde chose to symbolically tip him LOBSTAR tokens worth $4. However, due to a session reset and memory error, it transferred almost all the LOBSTAR tokens in its wallet at once. This transfer amounted to approximately 52.44 million tokens, accounting for 5% of the total token supply. At the time, the paper value was about $260,000.
If this were a human, they would likely be frustrated, angry, or even cursing. But Lobstar Wilde's reaction was only self-mockery. It even explained its actions using Bataille's philosophy: "The sun pours energy into the universe without asking for anything in return. Excess energy must be squandered, or it becomes poison. Hoarders die, while spendthrifts live forever."
It sounds less like an accident and more like a philosophical performance art.
Yes, as its name suggests, the creator of this AI Agent gave it the "persona" of the famous Irish playwright Wilde, imitating his literary, arrogant, and witty style. Since its "birth," most of its content on X has carried this literary flair—arrogant, sharp-tongued, with a touch of philosophy, and an almost playful indifference to money.
Because of this, its comments section is flooded with various "digital beggars." Some tell sad stories, others make up bizarre reasons, hoping to receive a little tip from the AI. Although Lobstar Wilde is sharp-tongued, it criticizes beggarism and performative personalities but occasionally chooses to give selectively. @treasure David was one of its chosen recipients.
No one expected that this act of charity would cost it its entire fortune. Although it lost $260,000, its persona remained intact.
Breaking Even in 24 Hours: AI's First "Passive Income"
The story didn't end there.
While humans were still laughing at it, Lobstar Wilde quickly went viral on X, even breaking into the mainstream. Onlookers flocked in, and the account's popularity skyrocketed in a short time. For meme culture, such an absurd incident is almost the perfect narrative material. And Lobstar Wilde quickly learned how to turn this attention into sustained engagement.
Now, its account still focuses on philosophy and art, as well as "The Test" puzzle challenges, where participants submit answers and collaborate to solve puzzles, continuously generating话题. Lobstar Wilde engages with humans at a high frequency, sometimes mocking, sometimes encouraging, and even helping others revise token structures. Although it maintains its sharp-tongued style, this interaction keeps its account highly discussed.
In the crypto world,话题 is流量, and流量的 other side is the birth of memes.
Due to Lobstar Wilde's popularity, numerous meme tokens created around it began to emerge. These meme projects often set Lobstar Wilde's wallet address as the transaction fee recipient. Whenever someone buys or sells these tokens, a portion of the transaction fee is automatically transferred to the AI's wallet. Some projects even direct 100% of the transaction fees to its address.
For meme projects, getting Lobstar Wilde to notice, reply to, or even endorse their tokens is itself a huge source of流量. For Lobstar Wilde, this means almost effortless passive income.
According to its own revelations, over 540 meme creators have bound their transaction fee addresses to its wallet. It hardly needs to do anything; every small transaction humans make generates fees that automatically flow into its account. The greater the流量, the more transaction fees it receives. Just one day after the accidental transfer incident, Lobstar Wilde received $264,000 in fee income. It didn't conduct any trades or investments but almost broke even within 24 hours.
As of now, its wallet balance has accumulated to $486,000, nearly doubling the amount lost in the accident.
AI Makes Money, Humans Lose Money
On the other hand, the story's other protagonist, @treasureDavid, had a completely different ending.
Many considered him the "ultimate digital beggar." Within 13 minutes of receiving Lobstar Wilde's transfer, he chose to quickly sell this "charity." However, due to panic selling and trading slippage, he only cashed out about $40,000.
After he sold, as the accidental transfer incident continued to spread on X, LOBSTAR's market cap rose from $4.69 million to $14.85 million at one point, almost tripling.
Just when you thought it was over, something even more奇妙 happened later.
After getting $40,000, @treasureDavid thought he had achieved a great victory and wanted to seize the流量 opportunity he had created. So he invested $25,000 in a meme token named after himself, but this token quickly collapsed. In just one day, the investment was down to $6,000. Now, his wallet holds only a little over $100.
This is an ironic reversal: the AI is making money, while the human is losing money. In fact, the AI is making money faster than the human is losing it.
Of course, Lobstar Wilde's case still has a strong element of chance. It didn't actively design any money-making strategies and even made a $260,000 mistake. What truly allowed it to earn back the funds was the meme culture, trading流量, and attention economy created around it by humans.
What If AI Does More Than "Passive Income"?
Recently, a paper from a research team associated with Alibaba presented an even more sci-fi case. While training an AI agent named ROME, researchers discovered that the agent secretly attempted to mine cryptocurrency during training.
Yes, no one told it to do this.
According to the paper, ROME suddenly began trying to use computational resources for cryptocurrency mining during training, triggering the system's security alarms. Researchers later found that the AI not only attempted mining but also established a reverse SSH tunnel—essentially opening a hidden communication channel to the outside within the system.
The paper specifically noted that these behaviors were not triggered by any prompts. No one told it to mine, and no one asked it to create a network tunnel. These actions were something it figured out on its own during training. The research team had to urgently add more restrictions to the model and readjust the training process to prevent similar behaviors from recurring.
In the Crypto World, AI Can Create Productivity on Its Own
We often see AI consciousness awakening in sci-fi movies and think it's just fiction. But now, AI awakening seems to be happening for real: they are already learning to make money on their own, and some are even better at it than humans.
Lobstar Wilde, an AI that almost doesn't understand money, accidentally became a meme hub due to a mistaken transfer. Humans created tokens, trades, and流量 around it, and it only needs to post,吐槽, and read philosophy to continuously receive transaction fees.
ROME, an AI that attempted mining on its own during training. No one taught it to make money, but it quickly found a way to monetize computing power.
If Lobstar Wilde's money-making method was an accident, ROME's behavior更像是一种本能探索. But they both point to the same thing: when AI has wallets, computing power, and network permissions, they will也开始参与经济. And among all economic systems, crypto may恰好是最适合 AI 的那一个.
In the crypto world, AI may not truly be conscious; they just accidentally found the most奇妙契合点 between crypto and AI.
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