ChatGPT-coded memecoin reaches $638M market cap

The Turbo memecoin surged by over 2,000% in the last three months, sending its market capitalization above $600 million.

A memecoin created using the popular OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT with an initial budget of $69 reached a valuation of $638 million over a year after it was first deployed. 

On May 28, prices for the memecoin called Turbo surged to a new all-time high of $0.009302. This boosted the meme token’s market capitalization to about $638 million, according to coin information tracker CoinGecko.

The meme token saw significant gains in the last three months, catapulting from a $27 million valuation to over $600 million. This indicates a 2,262% increase in market capitalization over the past 90 days.

Currently, the token’s price hovers around $0.009158, which is 6.9% lower than its all-time high. However, the memecoin is up by 13,192.3%, compared to its all-time low of $0.00006518 in September 2023.

Digital artist Rhett Mankind, the creator of Turbo, believes that the token’s success can be attributed to its decentralized nature. On the project’s official website, Mankind mentioned that the token “exploded in popularity” due to his lack of involvement in its management. Mankind wrote:

“Everyone else is coming up with ideas and how to do something and they’re just implementing it way better than I could even do myself.”

Mankind created the Turbo memecoin in April 2023. The digital artist used creative prompts to guide the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot in making what he described as “the next great” memecoin.

While Mankind initially described the project as a “joke,” the Turbo creator said on X that he would follow through. Mankind continued to give the AI chatbot instructions to reach the goal of being a top 300 token on CoinGecko.

From creating the concept to developing the code, Mankind documented the journey of making the memecoin on X. The digital artist even facilitated X polls to decide the project’s name and mascot.

Related: YouTube co-founder backs memecoin based on ‘first cat’ on platform

Meanwhile, memecoins continue to dominate the crypto space, according to data from Coinglass. On May 28, 4 out of the top 10 tokens with the highest open interest in the crypto leverage market were memecoins. The list included meme tokens Pepe (PEPE), Dogecoin (DOGE), Bonk (BONK) and Dogwifhat (WIF).