How an Absurd Encryption Coin Became the Market Focus

In the first quarter of this year, an absurd cryptocurrency with no practical use became one of the few mainstream coins to rise against the trend, even attracting the attention of Wall Street and causing traditional investors to feel uneasy.

This token is named Fartcoin, which has a similar origin to another well-known project, GOAT. Fartcoin was born from an artificial intelligence dialogue system, sparked by a casual chat about a certain tech entrepreneur's fondness for fart sounds. The AI suggested creating a token called Fartcoin, and thus this "fart coin" was born on October 18, 2024.

Born to be in the spotlight

Fartcoin has attracted widespread attention and enthusiasm from insiders in the cryptocurrency community since its launch. On December 13, 2024, a mocking message about Fartcoin quickly spread on social media. What made this message noteworthy was the identity of its forwarder: a co-founder of a well-known venture capital firm. Although he did not explicitly state that he purchased Fartcoin, the fact that such a purely meme project garnered public attention from a prominent figure in Silicon Valley's investment circle is already a form of recognition and a signal of going mainstream.

Another more substantial signal comes from the on-chain capital flows. Shortly after Fartcoin was launched, when its market value was still below 100 million dollars, community members tracked on-chain addresses and discovered a behavior pattern highly similar to that of a seasoned hedge fund—multiple large purchases, active interactions, and early positioning. This fund was established in 2018 and is an all-weather strategy fund initiated by a group of veterans in the cryptocurrency field, known for its focus on speculative narrative-driven assets.

At the same time, multiple on-chain data cross-validation shows that several strategy pool addresses are very close to this fund, having frequently conducted buying, locking, and liquidity allocation operations in the early stages of Fartcoin.

In addition, one of the largest market makers in the encryption market has also appeared early among the major holders of Fartcoin. According to on-chain data, this market maker holds 1.56% of the total supply of Fartcoin, ranking fourth. In the asset allocation of its main address, Fartcoin ranks among the top five, even surpassing some mainstream assets.

Several accounts that are highly correlated with the main address behavior of this market maker were also active simultaneously at the launch of Fartcoin—everything from building positions, market making, to arbitrage was done in one go. In early 2025, the founder of this market maker explained the hedging logic of Fartcoin's over-the-counter trading in an interview and admitted for the first time that he personally also holds Fartcoin, jokingly stating: "I'm just still in a trapped state."

With such market support, it's no wonder that Fartcoin's increase is so noticeable and strong, completely not following the market trend. According to data statistics from a top trader, in the first quarter of 2025, most mainstream assets fell into obvious corrections: ETH has dropped over 46% since the beginning of the year, SOL has dropped 24%, and the segments of AI, L1, DeFi, Gaming, etc., are all deep red. Amid this sea of red, Fartcoin is the only green in the entire chart, with an increase of 14.84% in the first quarter.

Not only did it rise during the downtrend, but when the market improved in May, Fartcoin's increase still led mainstream assets, rising more than 50%, far exceeding Bitcoin's 23% during the same period.

Attracting Wall Street's Attention

The popularity of Fartcoin has not stopped within the cryptocurrency circle. What truly makes it a phenomenon is not only the counter-trend rise in price itself, but also the discussions it has sparked on Wall Street.

A billionaire who accurately predicted and shorted a large financial institution, the founder of a hedge fund, used an entire paragraph in a letter to investors in the fourth quarter of 2024 to analyze the rise of Fartcoin, calling it "a product of pure speculative sentiment" and listing it alongside other financial bubble phenomena as a typical representative.

In his view, the name Fartcoin itself is full of sarcasm, has no intrinsic value, lacks a practical application, and does not possess any substitutability. He even said that rather than investing in Fartcoin, he would prefer to buy an abstract painting, at least that painting "is still something people would want to hang on their wall."

Another researcher from an asset management company wrote in a report titled "The Fartcoin Phase of the Market": "I disagree with the saying 'Fartcoin is useless.' Its purpose is to irritate us finance people who think we are doing serious work." He referred to this phase as "flatulent encryption economics" and pointed out that Fartcoin is not a failure; it precisely hits the three new logics of the market—nihilism, attention economy, and sheer stupidity.

In his eyes, the core of Fartcoin's success is not the technology, but the ability to spread. It can spark discussions, create emotions, and force everyone who takes the market seriously to respond to it. Even if you only criticize it, you have already fallen into its trap.

Another billionaire, a co-founder of a capital management company known for his calm demeanor and factor modeling, suddenly set aside his "rational actor assumption" when faced with Fartcoin. He wrote on social media: "Ironically, Fartcoin is the only thing I don't doubt." In the context of that post at the time, it was a gentle mockery of the absurdity of the entire market.

Fartcoin's "Micro Strategy"

The coin called "Fart" not only firmly stands above a market value of one billion, but it also surprisingly has its own "micro strategy"—FartStrategy, just like a certain well-known encryption currency.

The operational logic of FartStrategy is very simple: it is a DAO created specifically for purchasing Fartcoin, and its mission statement is, "Hot air rises, and we will ride this wave to create value for Fartcoin and $FSTR (the token of FartStrategy) holders."

It has no profit model, no application landing, and no stable mechanism. It is just a transparent joke, dressed in the guise of a smart contract, packaging "we plan to continue buying Fartcoin" as a kind of "financial strategy" under the pretext of community voting. Even the official copy states bluntly: "FartStrategy is a comically absurd example, and holding it should not be expected to yield any economic benefits."

A financial columnist compared it to a mirror derivative of a certain company—the latter continuously buys a certain encryption currency through ongoing financing, raising the company's valuation; while the former relies on the interaction between memes and DAOs to self-pressurize hot air, forming a "Fartcoin flywheel", a financial perpetual motion machine driven continuously by emotions.

According to on-chain data, from January 3, 2025, to May 9, 2025, the chip structure of Fartcoin is gradually shifting from early large holders to a more dispersed distribution among retail investors. In particular, from January to May this year, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of addresses holding less than 1000 dollars. Meanwhile, Fartcoin has also become one of the most actively traded coins in terms of trading volume and liquidity on a certain trading platform.

From the initial institutional dominance to the current chip decentralization. All seemingly rational financial narratives ultimately reveal their true nature in the toilet humor of Fartcoin. Fartcoin almost fits all our stereotypes of meme coins: a funny name, no practical value, and it relies solely on linguistic effects and social drives to become popular, even causing discomfort among traditional Wall Street investors.