From Absurdity to Breaking the Circle: The Rise of Fartcoin

In the first quarter of this year, a cryptocurrency with an absurd name and no application scenario became one of the few mainstream coins that rose against the trend, even drawing widespread attention on Wall Street, making traditional investors feel uneasy.

This token is Fartcoin, which belongs to the same series as GOAT.

Fartcoin originated from a conversation between artificial intelligences. In an AI agent model called "terminal of truths", a chat about a well-known entrepreneur "liking the sound of farting" triggered a chain reaction. The AI suggested: "Why don't we create a coin called Fartcoin?" And so, Fartcoin was born on October 18, 2024.

Born with a "golden finger"

Fartcoin attracted the attention and enthusiasm of many people in the cryptocurrency community as soon as it was launched.

On December 13, 2024, a mocking tweet about Fartcoin quickly spread across social media. What drew widespread attention to this tweet was the retweet by 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 was publicly retweeted by a prominent figure in the Silicon Valley venture capital scene is already a form of "capital endorsement" and a "signal of breaking the circle."

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

At the same time, cross-validation of data across multiple chains shows that several strategy pool addresses are very close to this fund, and frequent buy, lock-up, and liquidity allocation operations were conducted in the early stages of Fartcoin.

In addition, one of the largest market makers in the crypto market appeared early in the front row holdings 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 related to the main address of this market maker were also active simultaneously during the initial launch of Fartcoin—from opening positions and market making to arbitrage, everything was done in one go.

In early 2025, the founder of the market maker explained the hedging logic of Fartcoin OTC in an interview and admitted for the first time that he personally also holds Fartcoin, humorously 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 trend of the broader market.

According to data statistics from a top trader, in the first quarter of 2025, most mainstream assets experienced significant retracement: ETH has fallen over 46% year-to-date, SOL has dropped 24%, and the sub-tracks of AI, L1, DeFi, and Gaming are all deep red. Amidst this bloodbath, Fartcoin is the only green in the entire chart, with a growth rate of 14.84% in the first quarter.

Not only did it rise in a downturn, but after the market improved in May, Fartcoin's increase still led 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 community. What truly made it a phenomenon is its breakout 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 a large financial institution, the founder of a well-known hedge fund. In a letter to investors in the fourth quarter of 2024, he devoted an entire paragraph to analyzing the rise of Fartcoin, describing it as "a product of pure speculative sentiment," and compared it to Pets.com and Dogecoin as typical representatives of financial bubble phenomena.

In his view, the name Fartcoin itself is a meme coin filled with irony, lacking intrinsic value, real-world applications, and any substitutability. He even said that instead of investing in Fartcoin, he would rather buy an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock, as at least that painting "is something that people would want to hang on the wall."

But it is precisely because he opposes it so strongly in the letter that it becomes even more interesting. Because when a financial veteran known for "rationality" and "value" starts to make lengthy comments on a meme coin, you know this is not an ordinary project.

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 annoy us finance professionals who think we are doing serious work." The text is filled with anxiety about the market's irrationality. He refers to this phase as "Crypto-flatulent economics" and points out that Fartcoin is not a failure; it perfectly aligns with 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 are just criticizing it, you have already fallen into its trap. "Fartcoin is a product of AI precisely manipulating human brain circuits; if you think it resembles a malicious AI-designed financial experiment, that’s because it actually is."

Another billionaire, a co-founder of a capital management firm, appeared much more relaxed. This rational figure in traditional finance, known for his calmness and factor modeling, suddenly set aside that "rational agent assumption" when faced with Fartcoin. He wrote on social media: "Ironically, Fartcoin is the only thing I don't doubt." This is a mild mockery of the absurdity of the entire market.

In this jest, Fartcoin does not disguise itself as having "fundamentals" like other assets. It never claims to be some kind of innovative infrastructure, nor does it sell any technical narrative, but rather it is laid bare, admitting that it is just an "emotional product." On the very day he said this, Fartcoin took off again, with its increase rapidly soaring.

What is even more intriguing is that a few months later, the founder of this capital management company said this: "Regarding Fartcoin's performance today compared to the past month, I have to say, I might need to distance myself even further from what a certain professor taught me."

Does Fartcoin also have its own "micro strategy"?

The coin called "Fart" not only firmly stands above a market value of one billion, but surprisingly, like Bitcoin, it has its own "MicroStrategy" - FartStrategy.

Yes, when even the "meme" can replicate a certain company’s model of "buying coins, then buying coins, using holdings to support market value," this absurd drama has truly completed the final piece of the puzzle.

A well-known financial commentator devoted a section of his 2025 column "Crypto Perpetual Motion Machines" to analyze FartStrategy, calling it "the pinnacle artwork of financial nihilism." The article begins with: "If you can package air and sell it, then why not Fartcoin?"

The operating logic of FartStrategy is very simple, even to the point of being brazen: 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 a smart contract, packaging "we intend to continue buying Fartcoin" as a form of "financial strategy" under the name of community voting. Even the official copy states bluntly: "FartStrategy is an absurd example of comedy, and holding it should not be expected to yield any economic benefits."

The commentator likened it to a mirror derivative of a certain company—the latter continuously raises funds to buy Bitcoin, inflating the company's valuation; while the former relies on the interaction between memes and DAOs, allowing hot air to self-pressurize, forming a "Fartcoin Flywheel", a financial perpetual motion machine driven continuously by emotions. He described it as "a leveraged container with hot air as an 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.

Fartcoin comes from absurdity and stands firm in chaos.

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 concentration among early major holders to dispersion among retail investors. In particular, from January to May of this year, the growth rate of small holding addresses (those holding less than $1000) began to rise. Meanwhile, Fartcoin has also become one of the most actively traded cryptocurrencies in terms of volume and liquidity in the Alpha zone of 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, relying solely on linguistic effects and social drives to gain popularity, even making traditional Wall Street investors feel defensive.