Rising from Absurdity, Standing in Chaos: The Rise of Fartcoin

On October 18, 2024, a cryptocurrency named Fartcoin was born. Its origin stems from a conversation between artificial intelligences, where a casual chat about a famous entrepreneur's fondness for fart sounds sparked a chain reaction in an AI agent model. The AI suggested creating a coin called Fartcoin, and thus, this absurd cryptocurrency came into existence.

Although Fartcoin seems to have no practical application scenarios, it has become one of the few mainstream coins that rose against the trend in the first quarter of 2025. Even more surprisingly, it has attracted widespread attention on Wall Street, leaving many traditional investors feeling uneasy.

Fartcoin immediately attracted the attention of many cryptocurrency enthusiasts upon its launch. On December 13, 2024, a mocking tweet about Fartcoin quickly spread across social media platforms. This tweet caught attention not only because of its content but, more importantly, because it was retweeted by a well-known venture capitalist. Although this investor did not explicitly state that they bought Fartcoin, the fact that a prominent figure in Silicon Valley venture capital publicly retweeted such a purely meme project is already a form of "capital endorsement" and "breakthrough signal."

Another more substantive signal comes from the on-chain capital flows. Soon after Fartcoin was launched, when its market cap 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 industry veterans in the cryptocurrency sector, known for focusing on narrative-driven speculative assets.

At the same time, a well-known market maker has also 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.

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 held Fartcoin, humorously stating that he was currently in a trapped position.

In the first quarter of 2025, while most mainstream assets were experiencing significant pullbacks, Fartcoin surged against the trend. Ethereum has dropped over 46% year-to-date, Solana down 24%, and sectors such as artificial intelligence, Layer 1, DeFi, and gaming are all in deep red. Yet amidst this "sea of blood", Fartcoin is the only green in the entire chart, with a rise of 14.84% in the first quarter.

Fartcoin's popularity has not been limited to the cryptocurrency sphere. The reason it has truly become a phenomenon is not only due to its counter-trend price increase but also the breaking-the-circle effect on Wall Street.

A founder of a famous 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 comparing it to Pets.com and Dogecoin as typical examples of financial bubbles.

Another 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 those of us who think we are engaged in serious work in finance." He referred to this phase as "flatulent crypto-economics" and pointed out that Fartcoin perfectly hits the three new logics of the market—nihilism, attention economy, and sheer stupidity.

In his view, the core of Fartcoin's success is not technology, but its 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.

Interestingly, Fartcoin also has its own "FartStrategy," a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) created specifically for the purchase of Fartcoin. 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."

A well-known financial commentator compared FartStrategy to a mirror derivative of a large company—the latter continuously raises funds to buy Bitcoin, increasing the company's valuation; while the former relies on the synergy of memes and DAOs to create self-pressurizing hot air, forming a "Fartcoin flywheel", a continuously emotion-driven financial perpetual motion machine.

From January 3, 2025, to May 9, 2025, the chip structure of Fartcoin is gradually shifting from concentration among early large holders to dispersion among retail investors. Particularly, from January to May of this year, the growth rate of addresses holding less than $1,000 has begun to rise. Meanwhile, Fartcoin has also become one of the most actively traded cryptocurrencies in terms of trading volume and liquidity on a certain trading platform.

Fartcoin comes from absurdity and stands firm in chaos. It almost fits all the stereotypes we have of meme coins: a funny name, no practical value, and a rise to fame driven entirely by linguistic effects and social influence, even making traditional Wall Street investors feel uneasy. However, it is this sheer absurdity that allows it to stand out in the current cryptocurrency market, becoming a thought-provoking financial phenomenon.