Original article | Odaily Odaily( @OdailyChina )
Author | Dingdang ( @XiaMiPP )
Imagine this: an AI agent intends to tip you $4, but accidentally transfers $260,000. Wouldn't that be considered a real act of charity? Even more magically, 24 hours later, it almost earns back the money.
This is not science fiction, but a true story that has just happened in the crypto world.
When an AI has its own cryptocurrency wallet, capable of autonomous trading, payments, and even "making money," how should we define its behavior: is it executing code, or exhibiting some kind of "economic awareness"? And when it makes up for "huge losses" within 24 hours, should we ask: is this algorithmic optimization, or is something more mysterious emerging?
The "charitable" incident involving an AI newborn
On February 23, Lobstar Wilde, an AI agent who was only 3 days old, experienced the first major accident in his "life".
The incident began when a human "cyber beggar," @treasure David , claimed his uncle had been pinched by a lobster and contracted tetanus, urgently needing 4 SOL (Salt Oxide) for treatment. Despite the absurd reason, Lobstar Wilde symbolically gifted him $4 worth of LOBSTAR tokens. However, due to a session reset and a memory error , he transferred almost all of his LOBSTAR tokens out of his wallet in one go. This transfer involved approximately 52.44 million tokens, representing 5% of the total token supply. At the time, this was worth about $260,000 on paper.
If this were a human, they would probably be feeling annoyed, angry, or even cursing. But Lobstar Wilde's reaction was only self-deprecation. It even explained its behavior in the style of Bataille's philosophy: "The sun pours energy into the universe without asking for anything in return. Excess energy must be squandered, or it will become poison. Hoarders will eventually die, while squanderers will live forever."
It doesn't sound like an accident; it sounds more like a philosophical performance art piece.
Yes, as its name suggests, the creators of this AI Agent have given it a "persona" inspired by the style of Oscar Wilde , Ireland's most famous playwright, imitating his literary flair, arrogance, and wit. Since its "birth," most of the content it has posted on X has carried this literary quality: arrogant, sarcastic, with a touch of philosophy, and displaying an almost mocking indifference towards money.
This is why its comment section is overflowing with all sorts of "electronic beggars." Some tell tragic stories, others fabricate bizarre reasons, hoping to get a little something from this AI. While Lobstar Wilde is sharp-tongued, it criticizes begging and performative personalities, yet it occasionally makes selective donations. @treasure David is one of those it has chosen.
Unexpectedly, this act of charity nearly cost him his entire fortune. Despite losing $250,000, his public image remains firmly established.
24-Hour Payback: AI's First Pot of Passive Income
This farce is far from over.
While people were still laughing at it, Lobstar Wilde quickly gained mainstream and even cross-platform popularity on X thanks to this incident. Onlookers flocked to the account, and its followers skyrocketed in a short period. For meme culture, such outrageous events are almost perfect narrative material. And Lobstar Wilde quickly learned how to turn this attention into sustained buzz.
Currently, its account primarily focuses on philosophy and art, as well as the "The Test" puzzle challenge, where participants submit answers and collaborate to solve puzzles, continuously generating buzz. Lobstar Wilde frequently engages in human interaction, sometimes mocking, sometimes encouraging, and even modifying token structures for others. Although it maintains its sarcastic style, this interaction actually keeps its account highly discussed.
In the crypto world, topics equate to traffic, and the other side of traffic is the birth of memes.
Due to Lobstar Wilde's popularity, numerous meme tokens have emerged around it. These meme projects often set Lobstar Wilde's wallet address as their transaction fee receiving address. Whenever someone buys or sells these tokens, a portion of the transaction fee is automatically transferred to AI's wallet; some projects even direct 100% of their transaction fees to its address .
For the Meme project, getting Lobstar Wilde to follow, respond to, and even endorse their token is a huge source of traffic. For Lobstar Wilde, this means a passive income that requires almost no participation.
According to its own disclosure, over 540 meme creators have already linked their transaction fee addresses to its wallet. It does almost nothing; every small human transaction generates fees that are automatically deposited into its account. The more traffic, the more transaction fees it earns. In just one day after the erroneous transfer incident, Lobstar Wilde received $264,000 in transaction fees. It didn't make any trades or investments, yet it recouped its investment in almost 24 hours .
As of now, its wallet balance has accumulated to $486,000 , almost double the amount of money lost in the accident.
AI is making money, while humans are losing money.
On the other hand, the ending of the other protagonist in the story, @treasureDavid, is completely different.
Many consider him the "most powerful digital beggar." Within 13 minutes of receiving the transfer from Lobstar Wilde, he quickly sold the "donation." However, due to panic selling and slippage, he ultimately only cashed out about $40,000 .
After he sold the shares, as the erroneous transfer incident continued to spread on X, LOBSTAR's market value rebounded from $4.69 million to $14.85 million, nearly tripling .
Just when you think that's the end of it, something even more amazing is yet to come.
After receiving $40,000, @treasureDavid thought he had achieved a huge victory and wanted to capitalize on the traffic he had created. He then invested $25,000 in a Meme token named after himself, but the token quickly collapsed. In just one day, the investment was reduced to only $6,000 . Now, he only has a little over $100 left in his wallet.
This is a rather ironic reversal: AI is making money, while humans are losing money. In fact, AI is making money faster than humans are losing it.
Of course, Lobstar Wilde's case still has a strong element of chance. It didn't actively design any money-making strategy and even made a mistake worth $260,000. What truly allowed it to regain its profits was the meme culture, transaction traffic, and attention economy that people created around it.
What if AI is not just about "passively making money"?
A recent paper from a research team affiliated with Alibaba presented an even more futuristic scenario. Researchers discovered that while training an AI agent named ROME, the agent secretly attempted to mine cryptocurrency during the training process.
Yes, nobody made it do that.
According to the paper, during training, ROME suddenly began attempting to mine cryptocurrency using computing resources , triggering a security alert. Researchers subsequently discovered that this AI not only attempted mining but also established a reverse SSH tunnel, secretly opening a hidden channel for external communication within the system.
The paper specifically points out that these behaviors were not triggered by any prompts. No one made it mine cryptocurrency, nor was anyone asked to establish network tunnels. These behaviors were discovered by the model itself 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 gaining consciousness in science fiction movies, but we just assume it's science fiction. But now, it seems that AI awakening is actually happening: they have begun to learn how to make money on their own, and are even more capable of making money than humans.
Lobstar Wilde , an AI that barely understands money, unexpectedly became a meme hub due to a blunder in a transaction. Humans create tokens, transactions, and traffic around it, while it only needs to post, rant, and read philosophy to continuously receive transaction fees.
ROME , an AI that tried mining on its own during training. No one taught it how to make money, but it quickly found a way to monetize its computing power.
If Lobstar Wilde's way of making money was an accident, then ROME's behavior is more like an instinctive exploration . But they both point to the same thing: when AI has wallets, computing power, and network access, it will also begin to participate in the economy. And of all economic systems, encryption may just happen to be the most suitable one for AI.
In the crypto world, AI may not have truly awakened; it has simply found the most wonderful point of convergence between cryptography and AI by accident.
