Can you imagine that a cryptocurrency with an absurd name and no application scenario has become one of the few mainstream coins that rose against the trend in the first quarter of this year? It even broke through on Wall Street, causing traditional investors to be shaken.
a16z co-founder retweeted its tweet, hedge fund Sigil Fund was suspected to be tracked on-chain for early large purchases, and market maker giant Wintermute included it in its core asset allocation, with Wintermute's founder also publicly stating he holds this token.
This token is indeed the one that shares a 'school of thought' with GOAT—Fartcoin.
The origin of Fartcoin comes from a conversation between AIs. A casual chat about Musk 'liking fart sounds' triggered a chain reaction in an AI agent model funded by a16z founder Marc Andreessen, called 'terminal of truths'.
AI proposed: 'How about we launch a coin called Fartcoin?' Thus, the fart coin Fartcoin was born on October 18, 2024.
Born with a 'golden finger'.
Fartcoin was born like a protagonist in a story with a golden finger, attracting a group of 'fart enthusiasts' in the crypto circle to watch, pursue, and buy.
On December 13, 2024, a mocking tweet about Fartcoin quickly spread on X (formerly Twitter). What made this tweet go viral was not its content but who retweeted it: a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen.
Although he did not explicitly state he bought Fartcoin, for such a thoroughly meme project, being publicly retweeted by one of Silicon Valley's most iconic venture capitalists is already a form of 'capital certification' and 'breakout signal'.
Another more substantive signal comes from on-chain fund movements. Shortly after Fartcoin went online, while its market cap was still below $100 million, community members tracked on-chain addresses and discovered highly similar behavioral trajectories to the seasoned hedge fund Sigil Fund—multiple large purchases, active interactions, and early positioning.
Sigil Fund was established in 2018, founded by a group of crypto OGs, a fully compliant all-weather strategy fund known for focusing on speculative narrative-driven assets. Its founder MrKvak has frequently expressed interest in the AI meme track on social platforms towards the end of 2024, and even on December 13, he retweeted a post about 'whether Sigil holds $30 million in Fartcoin', although he did not respond directly, it was widely interpreted by the community as 'implied entry'.
At the same time, multiple on-chain data cross-verifications show that several strategy pool addresses are very close to Sigil Fund, frequently conducting buying, locking, and Raydium liquidity allocation operations in Fartcoin's early stages. Related reading (Understanding Fartcoin's $1 billion journey: Institutional early layout may be the push, cold fermentation forges the new king of MEME)
In addition, there are even more active roles making an appearance—Wintermute, one of the largest market makers in the crypto market, has been seen early on in Fartcoin's front-row holdings. On-chain data shows that Wintermute holds 1.56% of the total supply of Fartcoin, ranking fourth. In its main address's asset allocation, Fartcoin ranks among the top five, even higher than some mainstream assets.
Data source: Arkham
Multiple accounts highly related to Wintermute's main address were also synchronously active during the early launch of Fartcoin—from building positions, market making, to arbitrage, all seamlessly executed.
It's worth mentioning that in early 2025, Wintermute founder Evgeny Gaevoy explained the hedging logic of Fartcoin OTC in an interview with Steady Lads (4:59), and first admitted that he personally holds Fartcoin, joking, 'I’m just still in a trapped state.'
With Wintermute at the helm, it’s no wonder Fartcoin's gains are so striking and strong, completely not following the broader market trend.
According to top trader Eugene's (known in the circle as 'Dove') statistics, in the first quarter of 2025, most mainstream assets faced significant pullbacks: ETH declined over 46% since the beginning of the year, SOL dropped 24%, with AI, L1, DeFi, and Gaming sectors painted deep red and extremely bleak. Amidst this sea of blood, Fartcoin was the only green on the entire chart, with a first-quarter gain of 14.84%. Against the backdrop of many assets suffering, Fartcoin stands out remarkably.
Image source: Eugene
Not only did it rise in a downtrend, but as the market improved in May, Fartcoin's gains still led mainstream assets, rising over 50%, far surpassing Bitcoin's 23% during the same period.
Wall Street talks about 'farts' with trepidation.
The popularity of Fartcoin did not stop at the crypto circle. What truly made it a phenomenon was not just the countertrend rise in price but its breakout on Wall Street.
'We are currently in the Fartcoin phase of the market cycle.' This statement comes from David Einhorn— the Jewish billionaire who accurately predicted and shorted Lehman Brothers, founder of the hedge fund Greenlight Capital. In his Q4 2024 letter to investors, David Einhorn took an entire paragraph to analyze the rise of Fartcoin, calling it 'a pure product of speculative sentiment', and listed it alongside 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 on two leveraged ETFs related to MicroStrategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.
In David Einhorn's view, Fartcoin, a meme coin inherently full of sarcasm, has no intrinsic value, no practical application, and lacks any substitutability. He even said that rather than invest in Fartcoin, he would prefer to buy a Jackson Pollock abstract painting, at least that painting 'is something people would want to hang on the wall'.
But it is precisely because he so vehemently opposes it in his letter that it becomes more interesting. When a financial veteran, known for 'rationality' and 'value', starts to make lengthy comments on a meme coin, you know this is no ordinary shitcoin.
Acadian Asset Management researcher Owen Lamont expressed it more directly. In a report titled (The Fartcoin Phase of the Market), he wrote: 'I disagree with the statement that Fartcoin is useless. Its purpose is to irritate us financial people who think we are doing serious work.' His words were filled with anxiety about the market's irrationality. He referred to this phase as 'Crypto-flatulent economics' and pointed out that Fartcoin is not a failure; it 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 spread. It can spark discussions, create emotions, and force everyone who takes the market seriously to respond to it. Even if you just curse it, you've already fallen into its trap. 'Fartcoin is a product of AI precisely manipulating human brain circuits; if you think it looks like a malicious AI-designed financial experiment, that's because it was meant to be.'
If the above two had some anger and restraint, billionaire Cliff Asness's attitude seemed much more relaxed. This co-founder of AQR Capital, a rational representative of traditional finance, is known for his calm demeanor and factor modeling; however, when facing Fartcoin, he suddenly let go of the 'rational person assumption'. He wrote on social media: 'Ironically, Fartcoin is the only thing I don’t doubt.' In the context of that post, this was a gentle mockery of the absurdity of the entire market.
In this mockery, Fartcoin does not disguise itself as an asset with 'fundamentals' like others. It never claims to be some kind of innovative infrastructure, nor does it sell any technical narrative; it simply stands there, candidly admitting it is just an 'emotional product'. On the same day he made this statement, Fartcoin took off again, with its price soaring rapidly.
What’s more intriguing is that a few months later, Cliff Asness said this: 'The performance of Fartcoin today versus the past month makes me think I might want to distance myself further from the teachings of Gene Fama.' (Gene Fama is the founder of the 'Efficient Market Hypothesis' and also Cliff Asness's academic mentor.)
Does Fartcoin also have MicroStrategy?
This coin named 'Fart' not only steadily stands above a market cap of one billion, but it also, like Bitcoin, has its own MicroStrategy—FartStrategy.
Yes, when even 'memes' can replicate MicroStrategy's model of 'buy coins, then buy coins, using holdings to support market value', this absurd drama has truly completed its final piece of the puzzle.
Bloomberg's financial columnist Matt Levine did not miss this spectacle. Matt Levine is a columnist for Bloomberg, former Goldman Sachs investment banker, and one of Wall Street's most popular financial commentators. His column ‘Money Stuff’ is regarded as 'must-read daily', with readers ranging from SEC officials to hedge fund managers across the entire Wall Street elite circle.
In his 2025 column (Crypto Perpetual Motion Machines), he dedicated a section to analyze FartStrategy, calling it 'the pinnacle artwork of financial nihilism'. The article began with: 'If you can sell packed air, why can’t it be Fartcoin?'
The operational logic of FartStrategy is very simple, even brazen: it is a DAO specifically created for purchasing 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.'
Doesn't it sound a bit like— 'We don’t produce content, we are just meme transporters'?
It has no profit model, no practical application, and no stable mechanism. It is merely a transparent joke, dressed in the guise of smart contracts, using the name of community voting to package 'we plan to continue buying Fartcoin' as a 'financial strategy'. Even the official copy candidly states: 'FartStrategy is a comedic absurd example; holding it should not be expected to yield any economic returns.'
Matt Levine compared it to a mirror derivative of MicroStrategy—the latter continuously financing to buy Bitcoin and inflate the company's valuation; while the former relies on the interplay of memes and DAOs to self-pressurize hot air, forming a 'Fartcoin Flywheel', a financial perpetual motion machine driven continuously by sentiment. He described it as 'a leverage container with hot air as an asset'; when its market cap exceeds the actual total value of Fartcoin held, it sells $FSTR to buy more Fartcoin, completing a pixel-level meme loop.
Fartcoin has emerged from absurdity, standing firm in chaos.
According to data from Dune and BubbleMaps, from January 3, 2025, to May 9, 2025, Fartcoin's chip structure is gradually expanding from early large holders to retail distribution.
Especially from January to May of this year, the growth slope of purple areas (addresses holding less than $1000) began to rise. Meanwhile, Fartcoin also became one of the most actively traded coins in Binance's Alpha zone in terms of trading volume and liquidity.
Fartcoin meme: My husband invested a large part of our fortune into a cryptocurrency token called Fartcoin, what should I do?
From the beginning of institutional speculation to the current distribution of chips. All seemingly rational financial narratives eventually reveal their true form in the toilet humor of Fartcoin.
Fartcoin almost fits all our stereotypes of meme coins: a funny name, no practical value, relying entirely on linguistic effects and social drives to become popular, even causing traditional Wall Street investors to feel shaken.