In the giant casino that is the internet economy, one artist put his chips on the squares labeled \u201cChatGPT\u201d and \u201cmeme coin,\u201d and hit the jackpot with a project called TurboToad<\/a>.<\/p>\n Melbourne-based Rhett Mankind<\/a> (real name: Rhett Dashwood) has worked in the digital art space for decades, eagerly joining the NFT world during its explosion in 2021. Earlier this year, his artwork was featured in Sotheby\u2019s \u201cNatively Digital<\/a>\u201d sale (it sold for \u20ac1,270, on an estimate of \u20ac6,000\u20138,000). More recently, Mankind has been doing marathon Twitter sessions where followers could send him their profile pictures and he would remake them in the styles of popular NFT artists like XCOPY<\/a> and Beeple<\/a>, using A.I. he had trained on their styles.<\/p>\n Despite Mankind\u2019s hustle, the recent downturn in the NFT market has been punishing. \u201cThe digital art space has been really dead\u2026,\u201d Mankind said in a recent, emotional YouTube post<\/a>. \u201cThis year has been really dead. I have really been struggling to get eyeballs on my art.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, two other trends were in the air. First, the crypto markets have been seized by a fresh round of interest in so-called \u201cmemecoins.\u201d These are novelty crypotocurrencies, often based on internet trends, that attract frenetic speculation (one, Pepecoin or $PEPE, was created on April 18, soaring<\/a> to a $1.8 billion market cap on May 5 before falling<\/a>).<\/p>\n Second, tech hype has moved from blockchain and the metaverse to generative A.I., and token markets have been flooded<\/a> with new, often-dodgy currencies with \u201cGPT\u201d or \u201cA.I.\u201d themes, hoping to cash in.<\/p>\n Following Mankind\u2019s projects making A.I.-generated Beeples and XCOPYs, he was thinking about how to do another work of \u201cdigital performance art\u201d using Artificial Intelligence. The idea he hit upon as \u201csort of a joke\u201d was to ask ChatGPT to instruct him how to launch a \u201csuccessful memecoin\u201d on a budget of $69.<\/p>\n Mankind posted to his Twitter followers that he would follow all of the steps the A.I. assistant gave him, documenting his journey as he went and letting them vote whenever there was a choice to be made.<\/p>\n And it worked.<\/p>\n I gave GPT-4 a budget of $69 and asked it to make the next great meme coin.<\/p>\n I will follow all instructions it gives me and document the process here. <\/p>\n Follow and participate \ud83d\udc47 pic.twitter.com\/bBxkxkg7eS<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Rhett Mankind (@rhett) April 23, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis honestly started from inception with a curious idea I had the day before and a $20 subscription to ChatGPT, to a couple of weeks later reaching a market cap of $200 million,\u201d Mankind told Artnet News via email. \u201cIt\u2019s staggering.\u201d<\/p>\n In the four days starting from April 23, Mankind used ChatGPT to provide him with the steps for launching a memecoin and then followed them: generating a coin name that would excite crypto-lovers (other options ChatGPT gave were \u201cAstroCorgi\u201d and \u201cHypeHound\u201d); writing and posting the white paper explaining the project; writing the code that would undergird the project; and launching the 69 billion tokens onto the blockchain, keeping 9 billion for himself.<\/p>\n Mankind used A.I. art generator Midjourney to create the token\u2019s \u201cTurboToad\u201d mascot. His followers dubbed the creature \u201cQuantum Leap.\u201d<\/p>\n Screenshot of @Rhett\u2019s Twitter post polling his followers about a mascot for TurboToad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n True, the artist blew through the original budget of $69 by hundreds of dollars, and relied on volunteers from his Twitter followers to check the A.I.-written code for errors. At one point, having run out of money, he turned to ChatGPT to suggest ways to fundraise, arriving at the idea of crowdfunding the project through exchanging donations for $TURBO tokens to get it off the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cThe initial crowdfund brought only 50 people, each providing from one dollar to a few hundred, willing to take a risk on what they thought might have a big return,\u201d Mankind explained. But the attention attracted by his online performance, pinging off of the huge interest in stories about ChatGPT\u2019s powers, served as an amplifier. As $TURBO started circulating, the project\u2019s story attracted attention\u2014and that attention, in turn, drew investors looking to trade the hype. \u201cNow we have over 16,000 holders and many big whales (as they are called in crypto) trading hundreds of thousands back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking through tears in his YouTube account of project, Mankind explained his theory of what had made it work:<\/p>\n What helped is that I have been in this space for a while, and I have forged some sincere relationships with people I\u2019ve never met, but built some trust. Because I\u2019ve been grinding for so long. And because I\u2019ve done some work in the crypto-art space, and people respect that, a lot of artists were supporting me, and a lot of artists had bought into the idea of this experiment or this performance art or whatever you want to call it. And they started retweeting it and telling people about it\u2014just some other artists saying things, just \u201cIsn\u2019t this a cool idea? Doesn\u2019t this spark inspiration or give you an idea hope?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Before the Hail Mary explosion of interest inspired by his ChatGPT performance, Mankind said that he had been thinking of quitting art due to the brutal realities of the online creative economy:<\/p>\n I was so close to stopping doing art as well. It\u2019s so hard. I can release as much as I like, but there\u2019s no one interested. Now everyone is starting to bid on my artwork, and I am so thankful for those new collectors as well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n $TURBO trades at a fraction of a fraction of a cent\u2014but with billions of tokens trading and hordes of global memecoin fans looking to bet<\/a> on the hot new thing, the \u201cmarket cap,\u201d or total value of the tokens, has fluctuated wildly between $40 million and $250 million in the last few days, according to CoinMarketCap<\/a>. That means that Mankind\u2019s personal holdings of 9 billion $TURBO have likely swung between $5 million and $33 million\u2014on paper at least, since he cannot sell them at once without affecting the price.<\/p>\n In the hyper-volatile memecoin market, $TURBO has already crashed once, peaking on May 6 before retracing some of the lost territory.<\/p>\n Screenshot of the $TURBO price history, via CoinMarketCap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMany people get caught up in the hype and don\u2019t do their own research,\u201d Mankind admitted, when asked about potential pitfalls ahead. \u201cSome don\u2019t realize this is a creative experiment, there\u2019s no intrinsic value here, no team, no developers, no roadmap, just an idea expressed that a community of people has responded to.\u201d<\/p>\n While supporters of Mankind have been fulsome in their praise for him as an artist, there is also no doubt that $TURBO is a vehicle for flippers. On the NFT Morning Show<\/em> podcast on Monday<\/a>, the hosts traded stories about getting in and out of $TURBO over the weekend, with one saying he put in 2 ETH (about $3,700) and got out 3.2 ETH (about $6,000).<\/p>\n Amid all the attention on $TURBO\u2019s A.I.-assisted origin, another artist, Brooklyn-based Johnny Shankman, known as White Lights<\/a>, posted a video<\/a> on May 5 showing how it was possible to create a memecoin in less than half a minute. After the video racked up close to 1 million views, crypto observers expressed<\/a> alarm<\/a> about the wave of scams potentially heading to market.<\/p>\n Digital artist Beeple, the best-known artist in the NFT art scene, dedicated his daily digital art post on May 4 to the image of a skyscraper-sized erect penis imagined as a space shuttle about to blast off, with the word \u201c$TURBO\u201d stamped on the launcher. Mocking the current memecoin frenzy, his caption joked that he was launching his own A.I. memecoin, Turboner, or $TRBNR.<\/p>\n Beeple wrote \u201cthis is definitely something we should decide to gamble on immediately\u2026 I mean given these circumstances is there even time at all to think?!?! AHHHHH. JUST SMASH THE BUY BUTTON AND PRAY TO BABY MARY PEPE JESUSS!!!!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n Replies to Beeple\u2019s tweet were flooded with<\/a> memecoin<\/a> investors<\/a> demanding<\/a> to know how they could buy into $TRBNR. A fake $TRBNR token also immediately sprang up<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
Striking GPT Gold<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Toad Mode<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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