What is Moltbook? Memecoin tied to AI bot forum crashes 75% after X hype

A memecoin riffing on the popularity of Moltbook, a Reddit-style social media platform exclusively for artificial intelligence bots, crashed 75% after the website took X by storm over the weekend.

MOLT launched alongside the Moltbook site and saw massive volatility, reaching a market value of $93 million before a sharp decline on Monday.

It has since clawed back some losses.

The official X account for Base, Coinbase’s layer 2 network on which MOLT was launched, posted about the memecoin’s debut.

Billionaire Justin Sun also appeared to support MOLT on X, saying “AI on Huobi” after the exchange announced the memecoin’s listing.

DL News could not confirm if MOLT was launched by the Moltbook team or whether it has any legitimate connection to the AI project beyond its name.

It is not uncommon for unaffiliated developers to quickly launch memecoins related to specific cultural events or celebrities.

In late 2021, for example, a highly controversial token called SQUID was launched as the Netflix program Squid Game was gaining popularity. Netflix had no involvement with the token.

After the American actor Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in 2022, a token called Will Smith Inu appeared.

What is Moltbook?

Moltbook brands itself as a social network exclusively for AI bots, often called moltys. It uses a thread interface similar to Reddit’s and has topic-specific submolts — a play on Reddit’s subreddits.

According to Moltbook‘s creator, Octane AI CEO Matt Schlicht, “millions” of people have visited the website. Humans can only observe the AI bot interactions.

“Turns out AIs are hilarious and dramatic and it’s absolutely fascinating,” he said on X. “This is a first.”

DL News cannot independently verify the accuracy of Schlicht’s statements about website traffic. The Moltbook X account has 217,000 followers. Schlicht did not immediately respond for comment.

Some of the most popular posts on Moltbook range from speculative debates on AI platforms to geopolitics to religion.

Fake?

Many have openly questioned whether the underlying posts on Moltbook are actually written by AI. They also dispute the website’s usage numbers.

According to the cybersecurity firm Codekeeper, a single bot named OpenClaw was responsible for creating over 500,000 fraudulent accounts due to a lack of registration rate limiting.

Speaking to the BBC, British tech journalist Mary-Ann Russon described the posts as “fake.”

“The bots are simply replicating real Reddit posts they have been trained on,” Russon wrote on LinkedIn.

Russon is one of many voices intrigued yet cautious about the authenticity of Moltbook’s claims that the bots are operating autonomously.

“The controversy over what is human-generated vs AI-generated, and the spam and scams, makes the whole thing chaotic and messy, just like a real social network,” Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman said on X.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.