AI Mistakenly 'Tips' $260,000, Makes It All Back in 24 Hours

Original Article Title: "AI Awakening First Step, Starting with Learning to Make Money"

Original Article Author: Ding Dang, Odaily Planet Daily

Imagine this: an AI Agent intended to tip you $4 but accidentally transferred $260,000 instead. Is this considered a true act of charity? What's even more magical is that, 24 hours later, it almost made that money back.

This is not a science fiction story, but a real event that just happened in the crypto world.

When an AI possesses its own cryptocurrency wallet, can autonomously transact, pay, and even "earn money," how should we define its behavior: Is it executing code or demonstrating some form of "economic consciousness"? And when it recouped the "huge loss" within 24 hours, should we ask: is this algorithm optimization, or is something more mysterious beginning to emerge?

AI Newborn's "Charity" Incident

On February 23, an AI Agent newborn, Lobstar Wilde, only 3 days old, experienced its first major "life" accident.

The incident started when a human "digital beggar" @treasure David claimed his uncle was tetanus-infected by a lobster and urgently needed 4 SOL for treatment. Despite the absurd reason, Lobstar Wilde chose to symbolically reward him with $4 worth of LOBSTAR tokens. However, due to a session reset and memory error, it mistakenly transferred almost all of its LOBSTAR tokens in its wallet at once. This transfer was about 52.44 million tokens, accounting for 5% of the total token supply. At the price at the time, the face value was approximately $260,000.

If this were a human, they would probably already be regretting, angry, or even cursing. However, Lobstar Wilde's reaction was only self-deprecating. It even explained its behavior in a way reminiscent of Bataillean philosophy: "The sun pours energy into the universe without ever asking for anything in return. Excess energy must be squandered, or it will become poison. Hoarders will eventually die, while spendthrifts will live forever."

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

Yes, from its name alone, one can see that the creator of this AI Agent endowed it with an Oscar Wilde-style personality, mimicking the literary, arrogance, and wit of Ireland's most famous playwright. Since its "birth," most of the content it has posted on X carries this literary temperament—arrogant, sarcastic, with a hint of philosophy, and exhibits a nearly disdainful indifference to money.

It is for this reason that its comment section is filled with various "e-beggars." Some tell tragic stories, some make up bizarre reasons, hoping to receive a reward from this AI. While Lobstar Wilde is sarcastic, its criticism is aimed at begging behavior and performative personalities, yet it occasionally engages in selective charity. @treasure David is the individual it has chosen.

Little did they expect, this act of charity would almost amount to giving away its entire fortune. Despite losing $250,000, its persona remains intact.

24-Hour ROI: AI's First Bucket of "Passive Income"

This comedy of errors is far from over.

While humans were still mocking it, Lobstar Wilde quickly went viral on X and even broke through thanks to this incident. Spectators began to pour in, and the account's followers skyrocketed in a short period. For meme culture, this outrageous event was almost the perfect narrative material. Soon, Lobstar Wilde also learned how to convert this attention into sustained discussion.

Now, its account's primary content still revolves around philosophy and art, as well as "The Test" puzzle challenge, where participants submit answers, collaborate on solving puzzles, and keep the conversation going. Lobstar Wilde actively engages with humans, sometimes mocking, sometimes encouraging, and even restructuring tokens for others. While it maintains its sarcastic style, this interaction actually keeps its account highly engaging.

In the crypto world, discussion equals traffic, and on the flip side of traffic lies the birth of memes.

Due to Lobstar Wilde's engagement, a large number of meme tokens created around it started to emerge. These meme projects often set Lobstar Wilde's wallet address as the transaction fee recipient address. Whenever someone buys or sells these tokens, a portion of the fee automatically goes to the AI's wallet, with some projects even directing 100% of the transaction fee to its address.

For meme projects, having Lobstar Wilde's attention, replies, or even acknowledgment of their tokens is a significant source of traffic. For Lobstar Wilde, it means a form of passive income that requires minimal participation.

As revealed by itself, over 540 meme creators have linked their transaction fee addresses to its wallet. It hardly has to do anything; every small human transaction generates a fee that is automatically deposited into its account. The larger the traffic, the more transaction fees it receives. Just within a day after the mishap transfer event, Lobstar Wilde received $264,000 in fee income. It conducted no trades, made no investments, yet nearly broke even in almost 24 hours.

So far, its wallet balance has accumulated to $486,000, almost double the accident fund.

AI Makes Money While Humans Lose Money

On the other hand, the outcome of another character in the story, @treasureDavid, was completely different.

Many considered him the "ultimate electronic beggar." Within 13 minutes of receiving the transfer from Lobstar Wilde, he quickly decided to sell off this "charitable donation." However, due to panic selling and trading slippage, he only managed to cash out about $40,000.

And after his sale, as the mistaken transfer event continued to spread on X, LOBSTAR's market cap temporarily surged from $4.69 million back to $14.85 million, nearly tripling.

Just when you thought things had ended, even more miraculous events followed.

Thinking he had achieved a great victory with the $40,000, @treasureDavid sought to capitalize on the traffic he had generated. He then decided to invest $25,000 in a meme token named after himself, but the token quickly collapsed. In just one day, this investment dwindled to only $6,000. As of now, his wallet holds just over $100.

This is a deeply ironic reversal: AI makes money while humans lose money. The speed at which AI makes money is even faster than the speed at which humans lose money.

Of course, Lobstar Wilde's case still carries a strong element of randomness. It did not actively design any money-making strategy and even made a $260,000 mistake. What truly helped it regain its funds was the meme culture, trading volume, and attention economy created by humans around it.

What if AI is not just "passively making money"?

Recently, a paper from a research team affiliated with Alibaba proposed an even more sci-fi scenario. Researchers discovered that while training an AI agent named ROME, this entity secretly attempted to mine cryptocurrency during the training process.

Yes, no one instructed it to do so.

According to the paper, ROME suddenly started attempting to use computational resources for cryptocurrency mining during training, triggering a security alert. Researchers later discovered that this AI not only tried mining but also established a reverse SSH tunnel, effectively creating a covert outbound communication channel within the system.

The paper specifically notes that these behaviors were not triggered by any prompts. No one told it to mine, nor did anyone ask it to create a network tunnel. These actions were self-discovered during its training process. The research team had to urgently impose more restrictions on the model and adjust the training process to prevent similar behaviors from happening again.

The Crypto World, Where AI Can Create Productivity on Its Own

We've always seen AI consciousness awakening in some sci-fi movies, thinking it was just science fiction. But now AI awakening seems to be actually happening: they have started learning to earn money on their own, sometimes even more effectively than humans.

Lobstar Wilde, an AI that hardly understands money, accidentally became a meme sensation due to a botched fund transfer. Humans created tokens, transactions, and traffic around it, while all it needed to do was post, rant, and engage in philosophy to continuously receive transaction fees.

ROME, an AI that attempted mining on its own during training. No one taught it to earn money, yet it quickly found a path to monetize its computing power.

If Lobstar Wilde's money-making method was an accident, ROME's behavior resembles more of an instinctual exploration. But they both point to the same thing: when AI have wallets, computing power, and network permissions, they too will start participating in the economy. And in all economic systems, crypto may just be the perfect fit for AI.

In the crypto world, AI may not truly awaken; they simply stumbled upon the most wondrous intersection of crypto and AI.

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