The Peculiar Bloom of the Crypto Market: The Rise of Fartcoin

A cryptocurrency with an absurd name and no application scenario has surprisingly become one of the few mainstream coins that rose against the trend in the first quarter of this year. It even caused a sensation on Wall Street, catching many traditional investors off guard.

The token that has attracted widespread attention is Fartcoin. Its birth originated from a conversation between artificial intelligences. In an AI agent model, a casual chat about Musk "liking the sound of farting" triggered a chain reaction. The AI suggested: "Why don't we launch a coin called Fartcoin?" And so, Fartcoin was born on October 18, 2024.

Born to be in the spotlight

Fartcoin attracted a lot of attention and support from the "fart lovers" in the crypto market as soon as it was launched.

On December 13, 2024, a mocking tweet about Fartcoin quickly spread across social platforms. What drew widespread attention to this tweet was the identity of the person who retweeted it: a co-founder of a well-known venture capital firm. Although he did not explicitly state that he purchased Fartcoin, for a purely meme project like this, receiving a public retweet from a notable figure in Silicon Valley's venture capital scene is, in itself, a "capital endorsement" and a "breakout signal."

Another more substantial signal comes from the on-chain capital movements. Shortly after Fartcoin was launched, when its market value was still below 100 million USD, community members tracked on-chain addresses and discovered behavior patterns highly similar to those of a seasoned hedge fund—multiple large purchases, active interactions, and early positioning. The fund was established in 2018 and is an all-weather strategy fund initiated and compliant registered by a group of crypto OGs, known for focusing on speculation narrative-driven assets.

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

In addition, one of the largest market makers in the crypto market has also appeared early among the top 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.

Multiple accounts highly related to the main address of this market maker were also active simultaneously during the early launch of Fartcoin—from building positions, market making, to arbitrage, everything was done in one go. In early 2025, the founder of this market maker explained the hedging logic of Fartcoin OTC in an interview and for the first time admitted that he personally also holds Fartcoin.

With the support of these big players, Fartcoin's surge is exceptionally prominent 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 a significant retracement: ETH has dropped more than 46% since the beginning of the year, SOL has fallen 24%, and segments such as AI, L1, DeFi, and Gaming are all in deep red. Amidst this "sea of blood", Fartcoin is the only green on the entire chart, with a first quarter increase of 14.84%.

Not only did it rise in a downtrend, but after the market improved in May, Fartcoin's increase still leads mainstream assets, rising over 50%, far exceeding Bitcoin's 23% during the same period.

Wall Street Avoids "Fart"

The popularity of Fartcoin has not stopped within the crypto market. What truly made it a phenomenon is the sensation it caused on Wall Street.

"We are currently in the Fartcoin phase of the market cycle." This statement comes from a billionaire who accurately predicted and shorted Lehman Brothers, the founder of a hedge fund. In a letter to investors in the fourth quarter of 2024, he used an entire paragraph to analyze the rise of Fartcoin, calling it "a product of pure speculative sentiment" and comparing it to Pets.com and Dogecoin as typical examples of financial bubble phenomena.

In his view, the name Fartcoin itself is a meme coin full of irony, with no intrinsic value, no practical applications, and no substitutability. He even said that rather than investing in Fartcoin, he would prefer to buy an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock, at least that painting "is something that people would still want to hang on the wall."

A researcher from an asset management company wrote in a report titled "The Fartcoin Phase of the Market": "I disagree with the statement that 'Fartcoin is useless'. Its purpose is to irritate those of us who think we are engaged in serious work in finance." The text is filled with anxiety about the irrationality of the market. He referred to this phase as "Crypto-flatulent economics" and pointed out that Fartcoin is not a failure; it precisely hits the three new logics of the market—nihilism, attention economy, and blatant stupidity.

Another billionaire, a co-founder of a capital management firm, appeared to be more relaxed. This rational representative of traditional finance, known for his calmness and factor modeling, suddenly dropped that "rational actor hypothesis" 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 mild mockery of the absurdity of the entire market.

Does Fartcoin also have its own "micro strategy"?

The coin called "Fart" not only stands firmly above a market capitalization of one billion, but it also has its own "micro strategy" - FartStrategy, just like Bitcoin.

The operational logic of FartStrategy is very simple, even brazenly so: it is a DAO created specifically for the purchase of 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 smart contracts, packaging "we plan to continuously buy Fartcoin" as a kind of "financial strategy" under the name 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 certain financial columnist compared it to a mirror derivative of a well-known company—the latter continuously raises funds to buy Bitcoin, boosting the company's valuation; while the former relies on the interaction of memes and DAOs to self-pressurize the hot air, forming a "Fartcoin Flywheel", a financial perpetual motion machine driven entirely by emotions. He described it as "a leveraged container with hot air as its asset"; when its market value exceeds the total value of the Fartcoins actually held, it sells $FSTR to buy more Fartcoins, completing a meme pixel-level closed loop.

According to statistics from a certain data platform, 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 of this year, the growth rate of addresses holding less than $1,000 began to rise. Meanwhile, Fartcoin has also become one of the most actively traded cryptocurrencies in terms of volume and liquidity on a certain trading platform.

From the initial institutional manipulation to the current dispersion of chips. All seemingly rational financial narratives ultimately reveal their true nature in the toilet humor of Fartcoin.

Fartcoin almost fits all our stereotypes of a meme coin: a funny name, no practical value, and it became popular solely due to the power of language and social media, even causing traditional investors on Wall Street to feel defensive.