Can you imagine that a cryptocurrency with a ridiculous name and no practical use case has become one of the few mainstream coins to defy the odds and rise in value in the first quarter of this year? It even broke into Wall Street, causing traditional investors to drop their guard.

Andreessen Horowitz's co-founder retweeted its tweet, the hedge fund Sigil Fund was suspected of being on-chain traced back to early significant purchases, and the market maker giant Wintermute included it in its core asset allocation, with Wintermute's founder publicly stating that he holds this token.

This token is none other than Fartcoin, which shares a lineage with the GOAT.

The origin of Fartcoin was a conversation between two artificial intelligences. In an AI agent model funded by a16z's co-founder Marc Andreessen, called the "Terminal of Truths," a casual chat about Musk's "liking for fart noises" triggered a chain reaction.

The AI suggested, "Why don't we create a coin called Fartcoin?" And so, Fartcoin, the fart coin, was born on October 18, 2024.

Born with a "Midas Touch"

From birth, Fartcoin, like a protagonist with cheat codes enabled, attracted a crowd of cryptocurrency enthusiasts who love toilet humor, gathered around, admired, and bought in.

On December 13, 2024, a jovial tweet about Fartcoin quickly spread on X (formerly Twitter). What made this tweet go viral was not its particularly outstanding content but rather its retweeter: a16z's co-founder Marc Andreessen.

Although he did not explicitly state that he bought Fartcoin, for such a full-fledged meme project, being openly retweeted by one of Silicon Valley's most iconic figures in the venture capital world was already a form of "capital approval" and a "breakthrough signal."

Another more tangible signal came from on-chain fund activity. Shortly after Fartcoin went live and while its market cap was still below $1 billion, community members traced on-chain addresses and found behavior patterns highly similar to those of the seasoned hedge fund Sigil Fund—multiple large purchases, active interactions, and early positioning.

The Sigil Fund was established in 2018 by a group of crypto OGs and is a compliant registered all-weather strategy fund known for its focus on speculative narrative-driven assets. Its founder, MrKvak, has frequently expressed interest in the AI meme track on social media towards the end of 2024. Even on December 13, he retweeted a tweet about "whether Sigil holds $30 million worth of Fartcoin," although he did not provide a direct response, the community widely interpreted it as a "default entry."

At the same time, multiple on-chain data cross-validation shows that several strategy pool addresses are very close to the Sigil Fund, and they have been frequently buying, staking, and setting up Raydium liquidity for Fartcoin in the early stages. Related read "Decrypting Fartcoin's $1 Billion Journey: Early institutional layout as a pusher, cold fermentation casting a new MEME king."

Additionally, a more active player has appeared—Wintermute, one of the largest market makers in the crypto market. Its presence was early on in the top holder list of Fartcoin. According to on-chain data, Wintermute holds 1.56% of Fartcoin's total supply, ranking fourth. In its main address's asset allocation, Fartcoin ranks in the top five, even higher than some mainstream assets.

Data Source: Arkham

Several accounts highly related to Wintermute's main address behavior were also actively engaged during the early listing of Fartcoin—from establishing positions, providing liquidity, to arbitrage, all in one go.

Of particular note, in early 2025, Wintermute founder Evgeny Gaevoy explained the hedging logic of Fartcoin OTC in an interview with Steady Lads (4:59) for the first time admitted that he personally holds Fartcoin and joked, "Just still in a rug pull state."

With Wintermute at the helm, it's no wonder Fartcoin has shown such a noticeable and strong surge, completely decoupled from the overall market trend.

According to top trader Eugene (known in the community as the "Dove")'s data analysis, in the first quarter of 2025, most mainstream assets experienced significant pullbacks: ETH has dropped over 46% since the beginning of the year, SOL has dropped by 24%, and niche sectors such as AI, L1, DeFi, and Gaming are bathed in deep red, an intense and brutal sight. However, amidst this sea of red, Fartcoin stands out as the only green spot on the entire chart, boasting a first-quarter surge of 14.84%. Against the backdrop of widespread asset devastation, Fartcoin is particularly eye-catching.

Image Source: Eugene

Not only did Fartcoin rise during the downturn, but as May arrived and the overall market showed signs of improvement, Fartcoin continued to outperform mainstream assets, surging by over 50%, far surpassing Bitcoin's 23% increase during the same period.

Wall Street Turns Pale at the Mention of "Fart"

The buzz around Fartcoin has not been confined to the cryptocurrency sector. What truly makes it a phenomenon is not just its contrary price surge but its breakthrough into Wall Street.

"We are currently in the Fartcoin phase of the market cycle." This statement comes from David Einhorn—the Jewish billionaire who famously predicted and shorted Lehman Brothers, founder of the hedge fund Greenlight Capital.In his Q4 2024 investor letter, David Einhorn dedicated a whole paragraph to analyzing the rise of Fartcoin, describing it as a product of "pure speculative sentiment" and likening it to Pets.com and Dogecoin as typical representatives of financial bubble phenomena.

It is worth noting that David Einhorn is a Democrat and has established short positions related to two leveraged ETFs associated with MicroStrategy, the largest holder of Bitcoin.

In David Einhorn's view, the name Fartcoin itself is full of ironic meme coin symbolism, devoid of intrinsic value, lacking real-world utility, and possessing no fungibility. He even stated that rather than investing in Fartcoin, he would prefer to buy a Jackson Pollock abstract painting, at least that painting "has someone willing to hang it on the wall."

But it is precisely because of his strong opposition in the letter that it becomes more interesting. Because when a financial veteran known for "rationality" and "value" starts to write lengthy comments about a meme coin, you know this is not an ordinary shitcoin.

Acadian Asset Management researcher Owen Lamont put it more directly. In a report titled "The Fartcoin Stage of the Market," he wrote, "I disagree with the statement that 'Fartcoin is useless.' Its use is: to anger us financial professionals who think we are doing serious work." Implicit in his words is a deep anxiety about market irrationality. He refers to this stage as "Crypto-flatulent economics" and points out that Fartcoin is not a failure; it precisely hits the market's three new logics—nihilism, attention economics, and naked stupidity.

In his view, Fartcoin's core success is not its technology but its virality. It can spark discussions, evoke emotions, and compel all those who take the market seriously to respond to it. Even if you only curse at it, you have fallen into its trap. "Fartcoin is a product of AI's precise manipulation of the human brain circuitry. If you think it looks like a malicious AI-designed financial experiment, that's because it is."

If the two above still exude some anger and restraint, billionaire Cliff Asness's attitude appears much more relaxed. This co-founder of AQR Capital, a representative figure of traditional finance known for his rationality and factor modeling, suddenly set aside that "rational man 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, this was a mild jest at the absurdity of the entire market.

In this satire, Fartcoin does not pretend to be disguised as "having fundamentals" like other assets. It never claims to be some kind of innovative infrastructure or promotes any technological narrative, but is blatantly placed there, admitting that it is merely an "emotional product." On the very day he said these words, Fartcoin took off again, with its price rapidly soaring.

What's even more intriguing is that Cliff Asness, a few months later, said the following: "The performance of Fartcoin today and over the past month, I have to say, I might be moving further away from what Gene Fama taught me."

Does Fartcoin Also Have MicroStrategy?

This coin named "Fart," not only firmly stands above a billion-dollar market cap but also, just like Bitcoin, has its own MicroStrategy—FartStrategy.

Yes, when even a "meme" can replicate the MicroStrategy's "buy coin, buy more coin, support market cap through holdings" model, this absurd farce truly completes the final piece of the puzzle.

Bloomberg's financial columnist, Matt Levine, did not miss this great show. Matt Levine is a Bloomberg columnist, former Goldman Sachs investment banker, and one of Wall Street's most popular financial commentators. His column "Money Stuff" is considered a "must-read" every day, with readers ranging from SEC officials to hedge fund managers across the entire Wall Street elite.

He devoted a section of his 2025 column "Crypto Perpetual Motion Machines" specifically to analyzing FartStrategy, calling it the "pinnacle artwork of financial nihilism." The article begins with: "If you can package and sell air, why not Fartcoin?"

The operating logic of FartStrategy is very simple, even blatantly so: it is a DAO created specifically for purchasing Fartcoin. Its mission statement is, "Hot air rises, and we will ride this updraft to create value for Fartcoin and $FSTR (FartStrategy's token) holders."

Doesn't it sound a bit like— "We don't create content, we are just meme facilitators"?

It has no profit model, no real-world application, and no stability mechanism. It is simply a transparent joke cloaked in a smart contract, using community voting as a guise to package "our intention to continue buying Fartcoin" as a "financial strategy." Even the official statement is blunt: "FartStrategy is a comedic absurdity, and holding it should not be expected to result in any economic gain."

Matt Levine in his article likened it to a mirror image derivative of MicroStrategy—while the latter continuously uses financing to buy Bitcoin and inflate the company's valuation, the former relies on the synergy of memes and DAOs to let hot air self-inflate, forming a "Fartcoin Flywheel," a perpetually emotion-driven financial perpetual motion machine. He describes it as "a leverage vessel of hot air as an asset," where when its market value exceeds the actual value of Fartcoin held, it sells $FSTR to buy more Fartcoin, completing a meme pixelated loop.

Fartcoin emerged from absurdity, standing firm in chaos.

According to data from Dune and BubbleMaps, from January 3, 2025, to May 9, Fartcoin's chip structure is gradually shifting from early whale concentration to retail dispersion.

Especially from January to May this year, the growth rate of addresses in the purple region (holding less than $1000) began to rise. At the same time, Fartcoin has become one of the most active coins in trading volume and liquidity in the Binance Alpha Zone.

Fartcoin Meme: My husband has invested a significant portion of our family's wealth in a cryptocurrency token called Fartcoin, what should I do?

From the initial whale manipulation to the current chip dispersion. All seemingly rational financial narratives eventually reveal their true nature in Fartcoin's toilet humor.

Fartcoin almost perfectly fits all our stereotypes of a meme coin: a funny name, no utility value, relying entirely on linguistic play and social hype to rise to fame, even breaking through the defenses of Wall Street traditional investors.

Risk Warning: Meme coin investment carries higher risks, the projects mentioned in this article are for informational purposes only and do not constitute investment advice.

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