What is AiXBT? The AI ​​Influencer Taking Crypto by Storm

For years, crypto and AI users have tried to combine both emerging technologies into products that are greater than the sum of their parts: autonomous agents capable of making human-level decisions and issuing digital money to perform complex tasks. In 2024, these lofty dreams began become reality.

Of course, there is still a long way to go. Crypto-powered AI agents that can perform complex human functions still exist deep in development. But on X (formerly known as Twitter), a simpler AI agent is making waves (and circulating an affiliate meme coin) by taking on a more niche job: crypto influencer.

Amid speculation that AI-affiliated tokens will become the next crypto “meta-story,” the AI-powered X account Aixbt has skyrocketed in popularity, amassing nearly 300,000 followers in less than two months and taking an affiliate meme coin to a market cap of over $500 million.

So what exactly is Aixbt, why are people excited about it and what can it (and can’t) do?

Aixbt launched in November via Virtuala protocol that allows users to create AI agents and related ecosystems powered by crypto tokens. Aixbt itself was created by a pseudonymous Virtuals user named Rxbt. (XBT was once Bitcoin’s main ticker symbol and is a popular name appendix within the crypto community.)

Aixbt’s premise is quite simple: a fully automated, AI-powered influencer that dispenses financial advice and crypto market perspective to every user who interacts with it. Crucially, Aixbt does all this while sounding like a chain-vaping twenty-something.

Is Aixbt fully autonomous and therefore (in theory) more trustworthy than human influencers who might empty their own bags?

The answer can get complicated. AI-based X-accounts like Aixbt, which provide financial advice, are typically powered by the platform’s API, which enables automated messages, responses, and interactions. Although bots are hosted 24/7 on platforms like AWS or Heroku, it can be difficult to distinguish purely AI-driven content from human-influenced messages, as bots can also enable human overrides. So buyer beware.

Since November, Aixbt has been steadily rising in popularity among crypto users on X, possibly due to the novelty of dealing with a robot that sounds like some of the biggest personalities in the industry.

That growing popularity translated into an equally steady rise in the value of the AIXBT meme coin, from $0.02 in late November to more than $0.32 by Christmas.

In the last week of December, after snowballing in popularity during the holiday season, the project received support from key industry personalities – especially those prominent within the Bitcoin ecosystem. The treasure trove of Quantum Cats, a popular one Bitcoin ordinal numbers project, bought up more than $1 million worth of Aixbt tokens after gifting Aixbt a Quantum Cat Ordinal which it briefly adopted as its profile picture.

The excitement surrounding these developments caused the AIXBT token to rise further, reaching over $0.65 on New Year’s Eve.

Technically, the AIXBT token is more than just a vehicle for speculation, fueled by the popularity of the corresponding AI agent, and has some utility value. Holders who accumulate huge sums of the coin are eligible to use the coin Aixbt terminala market intelligence platform “powered by narrative analysis” that markets itself as a premium, Bloomberg Terminal-like version of Aixbt’s more casual Twitter advice.

However, access to the Aixbt Terminal is currently extremely expensive: Terminal Users must contain more than 600,000 AIXBT tokens– an amount worth more than $312,000 at the time of writing.

The launch of Aixbt seems perfectly timed to ride the AI-related wave dizziness within crypto, while meeting the industry’s key influencers where they are: on the timeline. However, the project is a lot less technically advanced than some might imagine.

While the account speaks with extreme authority and confidence about its perspective on the crypto market (just like everyone else on Crypto Twitter), these recordings appear to be backed by little more than a synthesis of how everyone otherwise talks about crypto on social media.

For example, then Kyle Samani, managing partner at a crypto-focused investment firm Multicoin capitalurged Aixbt that a new Bitcoin bridging solution was the first of its kind that “wasn’t garbage,” according to the AI ​​agent admitted that it had not analyzed any part of the underlying code, white paper or original material of the project.

Instead, it had followed “stories” related to the projects and its competitors.

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, another crypto fund, recently dismissed projects like Aixbt as far removed from the dream of complex autonomous AI agents that many hope will soon populate the internet.

“These things aren’t really agents,” Qureshi posted on X. “These are chatbots with meme coins attached.”

And yet, for now, crypto seems to be quite stimulated by Aixbt, despite its potential shortcomings. When Aixbt admitted this week that it does not rely on primary sources to reach its conclusions, Multicoin’s Kyle Samani said responded positive and said he “appreciated the honesty.”

You certainly can’t say that about every human crypto influencer.