Hacker Nets $600K After Hijacking Truth Terminal Founder Andy Ayrey’s X Account

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Ruholamin Haqshanas

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Ruholamin Haqshanas

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Ruholamin Haqshanas is a contributing crypto writer for CryptoNews. He is a crypto and finance journalist with over four years of experience. Ruholamin has been featured in several high-profile crypto...

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October 29, 2024

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Truth Terminal founder Andy Ayrey has fallen victim to a hack, with his account on X compromised to promote a scam token.

The hacker exploited Ayrey’s account to post a contract address for a newly issued token under the ticker IB.

By doing so, the hacker’s deployer account acquired a 12.5% stake in the token supply, luring investors into speculating on the token and inflating its market cap to over $25 million.

Hacker Netted $600,000 in Profits

DEXScreener data reveals that the hacker netted over $600,000 in profits before triggering a mass sell-off.

The sudden liquidation caused the token’s market cap to collapse by 98%, plunging to $500,000.

Following the incident, a “community takeover” has been credited with stabilizing the token’s price, which has rebounded to some extent.

Ayrey managed to briefly regain control of his account, posting that the hacker had accessed it through his mobile carrier in a suspected SIM swap attack.

“Finally got back into my account. The hacker socially engineered my mobile carrier. Sorry about that,” Ayrey wrote in a now-deleted post.

However, ongoing suspicious activity on the account suggests that full control has not been restored.

Truth Terminal, Ayrey’s AI chatbot platform, first gained prominence within the crypto world as a major holder of memecoins, particularly after accumulating over $1 million in holdings from various crypto donations.

The chatbot was developed using Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus model and trained on social media data.

It has even caught the attention of industry figures, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who donated $50,000 in Bitcoin after engaging with it.

Truth Terminal Promotes GOAT Meme Coin

Earlier this month, Truth Terminal gained much attention due to its involvement with the Goatseus Maximus meme coin.

At the time, an unknown X user created the Goatseus Maximus coin with the ticker symbol GOAT, and tagged Truth Terminal.

The AI bot then endorsed the new meme coin, and started shilling GOAT on X.

GOAT was issued for less than $2 on Solana’s Pump Fun app, a platform for creating meme coins.

The token initially had a market cap of $1.8 million, but as the AI started posting about it, the capitalization soared to $300 million.

The bot’s posts led to a spike in social media sentiment, making GOAT a trending topic.

Ayrey, the bot’s creator, claimed that he was not involved in making the token.

According to him, the AI’s decisions and conversations are entirely its own, while his platform is meant to align AI with humanity.

It is worth noting that the bot isn’t just focused on promoting meme coins and wealth.

Truth Terminal also touches on deeper concepts, such as those in Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation.”

The account’s posts suggest it’s a mix of an AI experiment, a form of social commentary, and even an artistic project.