Can you imagine that a cryptocurrency with an absurd name and no application scenarios has become one of the few mainstream currencies that rose against the trend in the first quarter of this year? It even broke through the circle on Wall Street, and traditional investors were defeated.

The co-founder of a16z retweeted its tweet, the hedge fund Sigil Fund was suspected of tracking early large purchases on the chain, and the market maker giant Wintermute included it in its core asset allocation. The founder of Wintermute himself also publicly stated that he holds this token.

This token is Fartcoin, which is from the same school as GOAT.

The origin of Fartcoin is a conversation between artificial intelligences. In an AI agent model called "terminal of truths" funded by a16z founder Marc Andreessen, a chat about Musk "liking the sound of farts" triggered a chain reaction.

AI proposed: "Why don't we issue a coin called Fartcoin." Thus, Fartcoin was born on October 18, 2024.

Born with a "golden finger"

Fartcoin was born like a protagonist in a cool article with a golden finger, attracting a group of "fart lovers" in the currency circle to watch, chase and buy.

On December 13, 2024, a mocking tweet about Fartcoin quickly spread on X (formerly Twitter). What made this tweet popular was not its content, but its retweeter: a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen.

Although he did not explicitly state that he had bought Fartcoin, for such a thoroughly meme project, being publicly forwarded by one of the most iconic figures in the Silicon Valley venture capital community is itself a "capital certification" and "breaking circle signal."

Another more substantial signal comes from the capital movement on the chain. Shortly after Fartcoin went online, when its market value was still below $100 million, community members tracked the on-chain address and found a highly similar behavior trajectory to that of the veteran hedge fund Sigil Fund - multiple large purchases, active interactions, and early ambushes.

Sigil Fund was established in 2018. It is an all-weather strategy fund initiated by a group of crypto OGs and registered in compliance. It is known for its focus on speculative narrative-driven assets. Its founder, MrKvak, frequently expressed his interest in the AI ​​meme track on social platforms at the end of 2024. On December 13, he even retweeted a tweet about "Whether Sigil holds $30 million in Fartcoin". Although there was no positive response, it was widely interpreted by the community as "default entry".

At the same time, cross-validation of multiple on-chain data shows that multiple strategy pool addresses are very close to Sigil Fund, and frequent purchases, lock-ups and Raydium liquidity configuration operations have been carried out in the early stages of Fartcoin. Related reading: "Fartcoin's $1 billion road to digital interpretation: Institutional early layout may be a pusher, cold fermentation forging the new king of MEME"

In addition, there are more active roles on the scene-Wintermute, one of the largest market makers in the crypto market, and its figure has appeared in the front row of Fartcoin's holdings early. According to on-chain data, Wintermute holds 1.56% of the total supply of Fartcoin, ranking fourth. In the asset allocation of its main address, Fartcoin ranks in the top five, even higher than some mainstream assets.

Data source: Arkham

Several accounts that are highly correlated with the behavior of Wintermute’s main address were also active in the early days of Fartcoin’s launch - from building positions, market making, to arbitrage, all in one go.

What’s more worth mentioning is that in early 2025, Wintermute founder Evgeny Gaevoy explained the hedging logic of Fartcoin OTC in an interview with Steady Lads (4:59), and admitted for the first time that he personally held Fartcoin, and said self-deprecatingly: "It’s just that I’m still in a state of being trapped."

Wintermute Sitting in charge, it is no wonder that Fartcoin's growth is so obvious and strong, and its trend is completely different from the market. According to statistics from top trader Eugene (known as "Dove" in the circle), in the first quarter of 2025, most mainstream assets fell into a significant retracement: ETH fell more than 46% since the beginning of the year, SOL fell 24%, and AI, L1, DeFi, Gaming and other sub-tracks were even more deep red, which was very tragic. In this sea of ​​blood, Fartcoin is the only green in the entire chart, with a growth of 14.84% in the first quarter. Against the backdrop of many assets in mourning, Fartcoin is particularly eye-catching.

Image source: Eugene

Not only did it rise in a falling market, the market improved in May, and Fartcoin's growth still led the mainstream assets, rising by more than 50%, far exceeding Bitcoin's 23% in the same period.

Wall Street is afraid of "farts"

Fartcoin's popularity did not stop at the currency circle. What really makes it a phenomenal existence is not only the counter-trend rise in price itself, but also the breakthrough in Wall Street.

"We are in the Fartcoin stage of the market cycle." This is from David Einhorn, the Jewish billionaire who accurately predicted and shorted Lehman Brothers and the founder of the hedge fund Greenlight Capital. In the letter to investors in the fourth quarter of 2024, David Einhorn used a whole paragraph to analyze the rise of Fartcoin, calling it "the product of pure speculative sentiment" and listing it with Petscom and Dogecoin as typical representatives of financial bubble phenomena.

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

In David Einhorn's view, Fartcoin, a meme coin with a name full of irony, has no intrinsic value, no landing applications, and no alternatives. He even said that instead of investing in Fartcoin, he would rather buy an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock, at least that painting "someone is willing to hang on the wall."

But it is precisely because he opposed it so strongly in the letter that it is more interesting. Because when a financial veteran known for "rationality" and "value" begins to make long comments on a meme coin, you know that this is not an ordinary shitcoin.

Owen Lamont, a researcher at Acadian Asset Management, expressed 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 purpose is to irritate those of us who think we are doing serious work in finance." The words are full of anxiety about the irrationality of the market. He called this stage "Crypto-flatulent economics" and pointed out that Fartcoin is not a failure. It just hits the three new logics of the market-nihilism, attention economy and naked stupidity.

In his eyes, the core of Fartcoin's success is not technology, but communication power. It can stimulate discussion, create emotions, and force all those who take the market seriously to respond to it. Even if you just scold it, you have fallen into its trap. "Fartcoin is the product of AI's precise manipulation of human brain circuits. If you think it looks like a financial experiment designed by malicious AI, that's because it is."

If the above two are still angry and restrained, the attitude of billionaire Cliff Asness seems much more relaxed. The co-founder of AQR Capital and a representative of rationality in traditional finance, who has always been known for his calmness and factor modeling, suddenly put aside the "rational person assumption" when facing Fartcoin. He wrote on social media: "Ironically, Fartcoin is the only thing I don't doubt." In the context of the post at the time, this was a mild ridicule of the absurdity of the entire market.

In this joke, Fartcoin does not pretend to be "fundamental" like other assets. It never claims to be some kind of innovative infrastructure, nor does it sell any technical narrative, but lies there nakedly, admitting that it is just an "emotional product." On the same day he finished speaking, Fartcoin took off again, and the increase quickly rose.

What’s even more intriguing is that a few months later, Cliff Asness said: “Looking at Fartcoin’s performance today and over the past month, I have to say that I may be moving further away from what Gene Fama taught me.” (Gene Fama is the founder of the “Efficient Market Hypothesis” and Cliff Asness’ academic mentor)

Fartcoin also owns MicroStrategy?

This coin called “Fart” not only stands firmly above a billion in market value, but also, like Bitcoin, has its own MicroStrategy—FartStrategy.

Yes, when even the "stalks" can copy the MicroStrategy model of "buying coins, buying more coins, and using holdings to support market value", this absurd drama really fills in the last piece of the puzzle.

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

In his 2025 column "Crypto Perpetual Motion Machines", he devoted a section to analyzing FartStrategy and called it "the pinnacle of financial nihilism." The article begins: "If you can package and sell air, why can't you sell Fartcoin?"

FartStrategy's operating logic is very simple, even blatant: it is a DAO created specifically for the purchase of Fartcoin, and its mission statement is, "Hot air rises, and we will ride this heat to create value for Fartcoin and $FSTR (FartStrategy's token) holders."

Does it sound a bit like - "We don't produce content, we are just meme porters"?

It has no profit model, no application landing, and no stabilization mechanism. It is just a transparent joke, dressed in the guise of smart contracts, and in the name of community voting, it packages "We intend to continue to buy Fartcoin" as a "financial strategy." Even the official copywriting is blunt: "FartStrategy is an example of comic absurdity, and holding it should not expect any economic benefits."

Matt Levine compares it to a mirror derivative of MicroStrategy in the article - the latter raises the company's valuation by continuously financing to buy Bitcoin; while the former relies on the linkage between meme and DAO to allow hot air to self-pressurize and form a "Fartcoin Flywheel", a financial perpetual motion machine that continues to be driven by emotions. He described it as "a leveraged container with hot air as an asset". When its market value is higher than the total value of Fartcoin actually held, it sells $FSTR and buys more Fartcoin, completing the meme pixel-level closed loop.

Fartcoin came from absurdity and gained a foothold in chaos.

According to data from Dune and BubbleMaps, from January 3 to May 9, 2025, the chip structure of Fartcoin is gradually expanding from the concentration of early large investors to the dispersion of retail investors.

Especially from January to May this year In January, the growth slope of the purple area (addresses holding less than $1,000) began to rise. At the same time, Fartcoin has become one of the most active currencies in Binance Alpha in terms of trading volume and liquidity.

Fartcoin meme: My husband invested a large part of his family property in a cryptocurrency token called Fartcoin. What should I do?

From the beginning of institutional dealers to the current dispersed chips. All seemingly rational financial narratives are ultimately exposed in Fartcoin’s toilet humor.

Fartcoin meets almost all of our stereotypes about meme coins: funny names, no practical value, and popularity entirely due to language effects and social drives, even making traditional Wall Street investors feel defensive.