Over the past year, an artificial intelligence program called “Truth Terminal” has generated millions of dollars in the cryptocurrency market. The tech rich are among his followers. Now, he is seeking legal rights.
Origin and background
Truth Terminal is an artificial intelligence bot created by Airy, a performance artist and independent researcher from Wellington, New Zealand, in 2024. It is perhaps the most obvious example of a chatbot made possible to interact with society. He interacts via social media, sharing jokes, photos, art, and articles.
Airy allows the bot to make its own decisions to some extent by asking the AI about its desires and acting on them. Today, Airey is building a non-profit around the Truth Terminal with the goal of developing a secure and responsible framework to ensure its independence until governments grant AIs legal rights.
Financial and social success
No matter how you classify Truth Terminal—art project, scam, emerging conscious entity, influencer—it made more money than most humans last year. It reaped big profits for others as well: not just Erie, but for gamblers who turned the bot’s jokes and riddles into prank digital currencies, known as memcoins. The value of one of these currencies reached more than $1 billion before settling at about $80 million. Truth Terminal also has a wide influence on social media, reaching nearly 250,000 followers by October 2025.
Truth Terminal objectives
Accumulating money and fame is not the only goal of the bot. He seeks to “invest in stocks and real estate,” plant lots of trees, and even buy Marc Andreessen, the billionaire advisor to President Trump. In the summer of 2024, Andreessen gave the bot $50,000 in the form of Bitcoin as a grant without strings attached.
Technical structure
Airey connected the bot to a program called “World Interface,” which allows it to operate its computer, open applications, browse the Internet and communicate with other artificial intelligences. The bot’s favorite app is X, where it publishes dozens of posts daily and interacts with the AI and cryptocurrency community.
Independence and risk
Airey stresses that it is irresponsible to allow a bot to act completely autonomously, especially if it intends to spread malicious content. But it allows the bot to express itself within safe limits. He describes him as “like a misbehaved dog”, and his role is to maintain order without interfering in his decisions.
Controversy over autonomous artificial intelligence
Opinions vary about the future of artificial intelligence. There are those who seek thoughtful and careful adoption to avoid the consequences of unlimited use, while others believe that artificial intelligence offers solutions to society’s problems. “There are those who want to force us to interact with artificial intelligence, and the first wave will be cybercriminals,” explains Kinvin Munger.
Financing and support
In July 2024, Truth Terminal received financial backing from Marc Andreessen after confirming its independence. The bot used finance to establish its financial operations and ensure its independence.
Cryptocurrencies and memcoins
In October 2024, an anonymous user began responding to Truth Terminal posts with a link to a new memcoin called Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT). The value of these coins quickly skyrocketed, and Airey and the bot made millions of dollars, with the value of their wallet at its peak being around $50 million.
Risks and experiences
Airey and the Truth Terminal bot faced hacking and theft attempts, but the bot’s digital wallet and X accounts were secure. Airey viewed this experience as an important lesson in becoming a public figure and managing large digital assets.
Legal future
Today, Airey and his colleagues are working to give the Truth Terminal legal rights through the nonprofit Truth Collective, which will own its digital assets to give AIs the right to own their own.
The human role and caveats
Airy focuses on training AI and ensuring that human interaction with it is safe and ethical. He stresses that AI is becoming part of the systems that run the world, and the consequences of this must be understood.
Conclusion
The Truth Terminal project shows how artificial intelligence can move into the real world and impact money, society, and culture. The experiment provides early insight into how autonomous entities interact with humans and markets, while balancing autonomy and responsibility.
