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The Bankr $DRB Surge: When AI Moves Markets

AI-powered trading has taken center stage as Bankr and Grok sparked a viral token boom with $DRB.
The Bankr $DRB Surge: When AI Moves Markets
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Last week, Bankr, the AI-powered crypto trading companion growing in popularity on X and Farcaster, made waves when it helped deploy $DRB (DebtReliefBot), the first AI-generated token launched via Grok’s suggestion.

The saga began on March 7, 2025, when a user on X asked Grok, X's AI chatbot, to name a token. Grok suggested $DRB, and the user deployed it through Bankr, which leveraged Clanker's token launch protocol.

The result? A viral token explosion. Within three days, $DRB surged to a $38 million market cap, fueled by hype around the novelty of Grok's first unofficial token.

The market cap has since slid back to earth from that peak. Yet the token boasts $25M volume over the last day, currently putting it behind only a few USDC and cbBTC pairs on Base Base when it comes to trading activity.

After the $DRB deployment, more coins followed as users prompted Grok for more name ideas. Over 16 additional tokens were deployed this way through Bankr, triggering a second wave of speculation.

However, later on March 7, a user manipulated Grok. The requester prompted the AI to deliver ~4 ETH worth of trading fees that it had quickly racked up as the $DRB creator in its Privy-powered Bankr wallet.

The Bankr team quickly responded. As co-founder Deployer announced: "To safeguard Grok's future clanker fees, Bankr will no longer be responding to Grok." In turn, this cut-off cemented the status of $DRB as the main unofficial Grok token.

Grok's Bankr wallet has since accrued an additional +$600k worth of trading fees. For now, it's an open question if and how the X team will respond to these earnings. Deployer has recommended buy-and-burns, but what happens next here remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Bankr is continuing to evolve. The team is finalizing staking plans and preparing to launch Bankr Club, a power users membership program facilitated by 1,000 NFTs.

Zooming out, the $DRB boom is the latest example of how AI can drive real financial activity, but it also highlights the need for safeguards around AI wallets. It's a good time for iterating, though, as things are only just beginning here.


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William M. Peaster

Written by William M. Peaster

892 Articles View all      

William M. Peaster, Senior Writer, has been with Bankless since January 2021. Immersed in Ethereum since 2017, he writes the Metaversal newsletter on the onchain frontier, covering everything from AI projects to crypto games, as the team’s lead NFT analyst. With a background in creative writing, he writes fiction and publishes art on Ethereum in his free time.

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