Turbo (TURBO)

Turbo is a community-owned memecoin launched in April 2023 by Australian digital artist Rhett Mankind, who challenged OpenAI's GPT-4 to design a memecoin from scratch with just a $69 starting budget. The AI generated the smart contract code, proposed the 69 billion token supply, and outlined the community growth strategy — making TURBO one of the earliest memecoins built primarily through AI collaboration.

The initial launch was derailed by a bot that sniped nearly all available tokens. Mankind consulted GPT-4 again and pivoted to a community crowdfunding model for a second, successful launch under the Turbo branding. The creator subsequently renounced smart contract ownership and released the project's toad mascot, Quantum Leap, under a Creative Commons Zero license, handing full control to the community.

TURBO carries no transaction taxes and has its entire 69 billion token supply in active circulation with no treasury held by any central party. The project explicitly has no owner, generates no profit, and operates entirely through decentralized community effort. Originally an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, TURBO is also available in SPL format on the Solana network, and trades on more than 140 spot exchanges globally including Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase.

By May 2023, weeks after launch, TURBO had grown to a $77 million market cap. The project went on to reach an all-time high of approximately $0.0097 in May 2024 during a broader memecoin market rally.