Behold The Era Of Fartcoin's Majesty

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

For those of you who have been following me for a while, I’m certain that by this point you know I don’t consider myself to be too serious of a person.

Frankly, over the last 10 years, I’ve created a following in the financial world specifically, I’d like to think, because I’m not just another crusty old f*ck in a bowtie who happily surrendered their critical thinking skills to academics presenting modern monetary theory as some type of 9th Wonder of the World.

Yes, that’s right—I’ve cursed, dirty-joked, shit-talked, and drank my way into occupying at least some small sliver of iconoclastic space in the financial world. As I’ve said many times, I’m not even sure I can affect change, so I’m just happy to sit back and watch this experiment in monetary policy and human psychology play out.

It’s like the Jerry Springer Show for finance—the best kind of reality TV you can get.

Pictured: Neel Kashkari arbitrates monetary policy debate between FOMC members

Which is why, given my background, I’ve surprised even myself these last few weeks with how alarmed and disgusted I’ve been over the rise of financial products like the aptly named "Fartcoin"—a cryptocurrency that is assuredly worth zero dollars, has zero practical use, and is as noxious and empty as its name suggests.

But in today’s market, Fartcoin has skyrocketed to a market capitalization of near $1.3 billion. To put this into perspective, Fartcoin is now worth more than around 1,000 companies in the Russell 3000 Index, — companies with products and services, many of which are generating cash, others that are on a path to generating cash.

Fartcoin’s ascent (literally can’t believe I’m typing those words), marked by a 2,940% return since November 2024, dwarfs gains in almost all other assets — the risk averse and the risky. Since November 4, 2024, the S&P 500 has risen approximately 5.7%, while long-term Treasury bonds, oil, and gold have experienced slight declines.

Cryptocurrencies are about as speculative a financial asset as you can put money into right now. I’ve written extensively about how I think it’s the lowest-hanging fruit on the risk tree and how the asset class will likely be the first to dive and deleverage in the event of a market crash. Its use case remains uncertain over the long term, and there are infinite layers to the ecosystem — populated by got-rich-quick techno-dweeb ultra-billionaires with questionable personal hygiene and addictions to World of Warcraft — that have proven to be riddled with fraud and abuse.

Pictured: FTX’s Caroline Ellison

Within that universe of the most speculative asset class available, there are “conservative” options like Bitcoin, which has solidified its place as the protocol underpinning most of the rest of the crypto universe. And then there are “coins” that are obvious frauds, created solely to “rug” their users—that is, quickly defraud them. For example, coins launched by influencers like Hailey Welch, the Hawk Tauh girl, have been nothing more than giant cash grabs in plain sight for the whole world to see.

Pictured: Not Caroline Ellison

Other “coins”, like Dogecoin, move on speculation and social media mentions and have no legitimate use case in almost anyone’s daily affairs.

Out of this entire multi-trillion-dollar crypto universe, Fartcoin — admittedly created as a joke — may be the most obviously useless and meaningless collection of code ever assembled. Yet, because it has a funny name, it has somehow commanded a billion dollar market cap. In other words, most people are knowingly investing in an asset guaranteed to be worth nothing, provide no yield, and offer no use, under the pretense that someone else will buy it at a higher price so they can make money off of it. With stocks, people have an excuse — maybe they don’t know equity valuation or P/E ratios. With Fartcoin, there’s no hiding it — everyone in the world, including children, should know it’s a ruse.

More than 0DTE options, more than unlimited leveraged ETFs, and more than the GameStop saga, Fartcoin has become the financial asset manifestation of exactly what our market has become: Arkham Asylum, bursting at the seams with lunatics laughing like unhinged hyenas and unproductive assets chased by unsophisticated investors who, through the miracle of legalized sports betting, Robinhood, and “working from home”, have developed into full-on gambling addicts.

You’ve heard the expression “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”? Well, behold the stupid prize from playing 25 years of uninterrupted modern monetary theory:

The academic genius of Modern Monetary Theory that was supposed to be the infinite safeguard and final puzzle piece to solidifying a prosperous economy for the human race for the foreseeable future has led us here. How do we know we’re on the right path?

Every single thing the human race has ever done in the history of economics and finance has led us to Fartcoin.

Let that sink in.

In my 25 Stocks I’m Watching for 2025 article I published a couple of days ago, I highlighted that the 10-year yield has done nothing but move higher—to the tune of about 100 basis points—since the Fed started cutting rates.

A lot of people say this is the bond market screaming to the Fed that it hasn’t beaten inflation yet, which may very well be the case. But another message the 10-year yield could be sending is that the Fed has not been restrictive enough for long enough. I mean, think about it: we’re two years into a rate hike cycle with positive real rates, and not only have the stock market and the economy held up, but extremely speculative assets that have no business even existing continue to flourish.

The next time somebody asks you whether or not the money supply has an impact on inflation and markets, remind them that we printed something like 50% of all the money supply we’ve ever printed over hundreds of years —ever — in the last 8 years.

Then, explain Fartcoin to them.

The cause and effect isn’t really difficult to decipher. Again, we have defiled the corpse of the U.S. dollar by beating the money supply like a rented donkey we’ve commissioned to climb Everest with us, enriching the ultra-rich, further taxing the middle and lower classes with inflation, and, combined with the advent of the gamification of markets, turned the entire global economy into a massive casino that any human being can participate in. And now, with sites like Polymarket and Kalshi flourishing, there isn’t a single thing you cannot bet on.

As there always is in emerging betting markets, there’s going to be hot money that rises, sharks who feast, pigs who get slaughtered, and an infinite number of market participants with an infinite number of bets that return an infinite number of variable outcomes. If that were the only consequence to this lunacy and all we had to do was wait for things to “shake out,” it’d be fun to sit back and just watch this financial circus freak-show play out. But as best as I can see it, the potential outcomes from this mess are for things to get bad—or worse.

Of course, there’s the obvious shitty outcome, which is a market crash led by cryptocurrency’s massive growing influence on the global economy that’ll make 2008 look like playing Candyland with 11-year-olds at the dinner table. In this situation, we’d find out exactly how much leverage we’ve been playing with, how many of these companies we talk about daily are hidden frauds, and major questions would start getting asked about sovereign debt, the value of fiat currencies, and what sound money really is. It really could be the start of an “everything” crash and a massive global monetary reset.

Then there is the less-talked-about shitty outcome, where, either after a crash or in the event inflation moves lower, the Fed moves back toward a policy of monetary easing. All I have to say about that is: if policy is restrictive now and we are dealing with such obvious, insane and otherworldly excesses in markets as Fartcoin, imagine what would happen if we flooded the system with liquidity once again?

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Sure, people critical of quantitative easing, like myself, often bring up problems it creates, like widening the wealth inequality gap. But what about the less talked about problem of a giant psychological loss of confidence in all global markets when more quantitative easing leads to 100 new variations on Fartcoin and unlimited liquidity on Polymarket, where people will spend their “work from home” hours voting on whether or not House Speaker Mike Johnson will request mayonnaise on his turkey sandwich this coming Thursday for lunch?

With more liquidity shot into the system, we are going to be presented with a larger assortment of endless possibilities for unsophisticated investors to incinerate capital. It is actually feasible to think that these options may begin to undermine psychological confidence in the integrity of the global economy itself—if this hasn’t already begun to happen.

No matter how you slice it, almost every indicator you can pull up right now is screaming desperately for sanity in markets and the global economy. The difference between free-market, Austrian-school thinkers like myself and modern monetary theorists is that we believe recessions and crashes aren’t just healthy for markets—they’re necessary. In my opinion, there’s never been a time when politicians and central bankers—traditionally cowards when it comes to all things financial discomfort—needed to understand the benefits of markets getting ugly more than now. I can’t imagine how any free-market thinker looks at today’s financial world and its shining beacon on the hill, Fartcoin, and gets anything but a crystal clear message that the Fed now needs to hold the line—or even hike rates further.

It can be best summed up like this: either everything we know about finance and the economy over the last few thousand years has been wrong and crypto and modern monetary theory are going to upend everything into some new epoch of finance where norms and rules simply are meaningless and do not apply—or a lot of people “investing” in what they perceive to be the economy and markets nowadays are going to be in for a “Reality Show” rude awakening.

Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.