Yes, it's called Fartcoin. Yes, it is completely useless.
Yes, however, it has tripled in value over the past week to a market capitalization of more than $700 million — roughly equal to that of Office Depot, Guess Jeanswear, and the parent company of Steak N' Shake.
The carnival and casino era of cryptocurrencies is back with a vengeance, riding a broader wave of Bitcoin investment spurred by the election of Donald Trump. It makes millionaires while hurting everyone else – and yet everyone, even the losers, seems to be in on the joke.
The wave of “memecoiners” is a mix of long-time bitcoin holders and people simply desperate to turn their fortunes around in the age of overpriced houses and stocks, according to Toy Bautista, a research analyst at GSR, a decentralized finance group. While many memecoin traders, who have made gains thanks to Bitcoin's 130% surge this year — 50% of which has come since Trump was elected last month — are simply “sliding down the risk curve” into purely speculative territory, Bautista said. Others see the potential to make 10 times their money overnight.
“A lot of people think, 'I can get some kind of advantage by having a better chance of getting a lottery ticket,'” Bautista said.
Memecoin buyers and sellers alike, Bautista said, often realize that their business amounts to the most dangerous form of gambling. It's all about exiting the position to avoid being left with 'holding the bag' and failing to trade and strike while the price is hot.
“Because it's worthless, you're betting on the 'bigger fool,'” he said, referring to the idea that someone else will pay a higher price for a particular memecoin. “You're thinking, 'I'm too early for this, someone's going to buy the bags.'” But no There is a fundamental driver of its value.”
For the most part, the biggest risk in memecoin trading, which tends to depend on the age of memes spreading online, is that the meme itself fades away from the cultural zeitgeist. In fact, the gains from a given news cycle for a very select few can be significant. Blockchain data shows that at least one owner of the coin created in the wake of last month's Peanut the Squirrel incident, which involved the death of a rodent that a New York man may have kept without permission, owns nearly half a billion dollars.
Today, that coin, PNUT, has fallen by about half from its peak value of $2.47, as that news story fades from view.
However, there are also operational risks facing memecoins, as evidenced by the meteoric rise and fall of Hawk, issued earlier this month by Haley Welch, a Tennessee woman who parlayed a profane street encounter into a successful podcast.
Over the course of 24 hours, Hawk's market capitalization peaked at $500 million before collapsing to $28 million, sparking complaints about huge losses of funds. These complaints have not been independently verified by NBC News.
Facing accusations of insider trading, Welch issued a statement saying neither she nor anyone on her team sold the coins, blaming instead on “sniper” algorithmic bots designed to sell as prices begin to rise.
In fact, algorithmic trading, which has long been part of mainstream trading on Wall Street, is now routinely deployed in the memecoin space, Bautista said. It is estimated that of the top 20 most traded crypto coins, half are meme coins whose trades are almost entirely powered by bots designed to detect and respond to price movements.
Is it legal? Some believe that memecoins are allowed because the SEC has not officially classified Bitcoin as a security. However, the agency took action against exchanges that allowed trading of other tokens. More importantly, many meme currencies, including Fartcoin, do not appear to be able to be legally purchased from US soil on most cryptocurrency exchanges that offer them.
Ground Zero for launching memecoins is a website called Pump.fun, which allows users to “instantly launch a tradable currency with one click for free.” Launched in January 2024, the site has generated more than $288.4 million in revenue since its inception, according to analytics data cited by CoinTelegraph, a cryptocurrency industry publication.
Earlier this month, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority said the site was not authorized in the country and warned anyone who interacts with a product or service linked to the site has no investor protections.
However, the website's terms and conditions state that its provisions are subject to the “laws of England”.
The site's spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
It may be the digital Wild West, but some tools have been developed to help unsophisticated memecoin participants avoid outright scams. A site called Rugcheck.xyz describes itself as being able to scan memecoin ownership data to determine whether an actor or small group of actors is able to put their thumb across the market. Pump.fun itself says it prevents “stalps,” or sudden price drops, by ensuring that any tokens it launches do not contain pre-sales or small allocations that would benefit insiders.
It is not clear how long the current “bull” cycle for cryptocurrencies will last, but at least one analyst believes it is still in the relatively early stages given the potential developments in the coming year – namely the possibility of further interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, and the implementation of… More favorable policies for cryptocurrencies by the Trump administration.
“There are a lot of events in 2025 that could help push Bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices even higher,” Gracie Chen, CEO of cryptocurrency group Bitget, said in an interview with NBC News.
In fact, Trump World has already shown signs of accelerating its adoption of cryptocurrencies. World Liberty Financial, a “Trump-inspired” cryptocurrency project, is buying millions of dollars worth of non-bitcoin tokens, a sign that a decentralized financial lending platform could launch soon, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Trump has been named as the ultimate “financial beneficiary” of global freedom.
A World Liberty spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
However, there is clearly a dark side to the meme queen world. Omid Malkan, who studies cryptocurrencies at Columbia Business School at Columbia University, said this symbolizes the economic “nihilism” that has taken hold among many young Americans who feel they have been excluded from the American dream.
“All these kids saying, 'All the good stocks are too expensive. And the houses? I can't afford them,'” Malkan said. “So, I'll gamble on something that can multiply my money tenfold, and if I lose it all, who cares, I lost anyway.”
