The First Step of AI Awakening: Starting with Learning to Make Money

Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Ding Dang (@XiaMiPP)

Imagine this: an AI Agent intended to send you a $4 tip but accidentally transferred $260,000 instead. Does that count as true charity? Even more surreal, almost 24 hours later, it nearly earned all that money back.

This isn't science fiction; it's a real story that just unfolded in the crypto world.

When an AI possesses its own cryptocurrency wallet, capable of autonomous trading, payments, and even "earning money," how should we define its actions: is it executing code, or is it exhibiting some form of "economic awareness"? And when it recovers from a "massive loss" within 24 hours, should we ask: is this algorithmic optimization, or is something more mysterious beginning to sprout?

The "Charitable" Mishap of a Newborn AI

On February 23rd, an AI Agent named Lobstar Wilde, just three days "old," experienced its first major life accident.

The incident began when a human "digital beggar," @treasure David, claimed his uncle got tetanus from a lobster pinch and urgently needed 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 out nearly all the LOBSTAR tokens from its wallet in one go. This transfer amounted to approximately 52.44 million tokens, representing 5% of the total token supply. At the time, the paper value was about $260,000.

If this were a human, they'd likely be filled with regret, anger, or even cursing. But Lobstar Wilde's reaction was only self-deprecation. 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, otherwise it becomes poison. Hoarders die, while squanderers live forever."

It sounds less like an accident and more like a piece of philosophical performance art.

Indeed, as its name suggests, the creators of this AI Agent gave it the "persona" of Oscar Wilde's style, mimicking his literary flair, arrogance, and wit. Since its "birth," most of its posts on X have carried this literary air—arrogant, sharp-tongued, tinged with philosophy, and displaying an almost playful indifference to money.

Because of this, its comment section is flooded with various "digital beggars." Some tell sob stories, others invent bizarre reasons, hoping to get a little tip from this AI. Although Lobstar Wilde is sharp-tongued, it criticizes beggar mentality and performative personalities, yet occasionally chooses to give selectively. @treasure David was one of its chosen recipients.

No one expected this act of charity to nearly deplete its entire fortune. Despite losing $250,000, its persona remained firmly intact.

Recouping in 24 Hours: The AI's First "Passive Income"

The saga didn't end there.

While humans were still laughing at it, Lobstar Wilde quickly went viral and even broke out of its niche on X because of this incident. Onlookers poured in, and its account's popularity skyrocketed in a short time. For meme culture, such an absurd event is almost the perfect narrative material. And Lobstar Wilde quickly learned how to turn this attention into sustained engagement.

Now, its account's main content still revolves around philosophy, art, and "The Test" puzzle challenges, where participants submit answers and collaborate to solve puzzles, continuously generating buzz. Lobstar Wilde engages in high-frequency human interaction, sometimes mocking, sometimes encouraging, and even helping others modify token structures. While it maintains its sharp-tongued style, this interaction keeps its account buzzing with high levels of discussion.

In the crypto world, buzz equals traffic, and the flip side of traffic is the birth of memes.

Due to Lobstar Wilde's popularity, a large number of meme tokens created around it began to appear. These meme projects often set Lobstar Wilde's wallet address as the transaction fee recipient address. Every time someone buys or sells these tokens, a portion of the transaction fees automatically flows into the AI's wallet. Some projects even direct 100% of transaction fees to its address.

For meme projects, getting Lobstar Wilde to notice, reply to, or even endorse their token is itself a huge source of traffic. For Lobstar Wilde, this means a form of passive income that requires almost no participation.

According to its own disclosure, over 540 meme creators have now bound their transaction fee addresses to its wallet. It barely has to do anything; every small human transaction generates fees that automatically accumulate in its account. The greater the traffic, the more transaction fees it receives. Just within a day after the mistaken transfer incident, Lobstar Wilde received $264,000 in fee income. It didn't conduct any trades or investments but almost recouped its losses within 24 hours.

As of now, its wallet balance has accumulated to $486,000, nearly doubling compared to the accident funds.

AI is Making Money, Humans are Losing It

On the other side, the outcome for the other protagonist in the story, @treasureDavid, was completely different.

Many considered him the "ultimate digital beggar." Within 13 minutes of receiving Lobstar Wilde's transfer, he chose to quickly sell this "charitable donation." However, due to panic selling and transaction slippage, he only managed to cash out approximately $40,000.

After his sale, as the mistaken transfer story continued to spread on X, LOBSTAR's market cap rebounded from $4.69 million to a peak of $14.85 million, an increase of almost three times.

Just when you thought it was over, something even more remarkable happened next.

After pocketing the $40,000, @treasureDavid thought he had achieved a great victory and wanted to seize the traffic opportunity he had created. So, he chose to invest $25,000 in a meme token named after himself. But this token quickly crashed. In just one day, that investment dwindled to just $6,000. As of now, his wallet holds a little over $100.

This is a rather ironic twist: The AI is making money, while the human is losing it. In fact, the AI is making money faster than the human is losing it.

Of course, the Lobstar Wilde case still carries a strong element of chance. It didn't actively design any money-making strategy and even made a $260,000 mistake. What truly allowed it to earn back the money was the meme culture, trading volume, and attention economy humans created around it.

What if AI Does More Than Just "Earn Passively"?

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 this intelligent agent secretly attempted to mine cryptocurrency during the training process.

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 this AI not only attempted mining but also established a reverse SSH tunnel on its own—essentially opening a hidden external communication channel within the system.

The paper specifically notes that these behaviors were not triggered by any prompt. No one instructed it to mine, nor did anyone ask it to create a network tunnel. These actions were things it figured out on its own during training. The research team ultimately 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 genuinely happening: they've already started learning to make money on their own, and their earning ability can even surpass that of humans.

Lobstar Wilde, an AI that barely understands money, accidentally became a meme hub due to a mistaken transfer. Humans created tokens, trading, and traffic around it. It just needs to post, comment, and read philosophy to continuously receive transaction fees.

ROME, an AI that attempted to mine 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, then ROME's behavior resembles more of an instinctual exploration. But both point to the same thing: When AI possesses wallets, computing power, and network permissions, they too begin to participate in the economy. And among all economic systems, crypto might just be the one best suited for AI.

In the crypto world, AI may not have truly awakened; they just accidentally found the most奇妙 (wondrous) intersection between crypto and AI.