The Essence of Meme Harvesting in US Stocks Seen Through FAMI and JINQIAN

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Author: @Mrjacknicee

On September 2, on the Robinhood chain, a token called JINQIAN CA:0xe81880c1c5054245e036359f5c7be31606e79f56 reached a market cap of over 70 million USD in just one hour.

JINQIAN, in Pinyin, means "money". The Nasdaq company it is associated with, Farmmi, specializes in mushrooms; and in Farmmi's annual report, there is indeed a record of a mushroom variety called Jinqian mushroom, which the community refers to as "money mushroom".

At the same time, Farmmi's underlying stock on Nasdaq, coded FAMI, surged over 300% during trading, briefly touching around 0.4 USD, with trading volume expanding to hundreds of millions of shares. A micro-cap company that just days ago was hovering around 0.12 USD, with a market cap of over four million USD, suddenly became the brightest star on the market.

On-chain, a token called "FAMI" also followed JINQIAN's rise, at one point exceeding 100 million USD.

The story begins two days prior.

A Good Narrative

On August 31, crypto trader Rune (@RuneCrypto_) tweeted that he spent about 1.8 million USD to buy 37.4% of a low-market-cap Nasdaq company in the over-the-counter (OTC) market. He provided specific numbers: a market cap of about 4.8 million USD, a stock price of about 0.12 USD, and a short ratio of 92.3%, indicating that almost the entire float was borrowed for short selling.

He also did not hide his next plan: to tokenize this stock on the Robinhood Chain, then issue a paired meme coin, using on-chain funds to buy the underlying stock and force a short squeeze. A short squeeze is when those who borrowed the stock to short are forced to buy it back at the highest price to cover their positions.

This is clearly a good story. The short squeeze narrative is ingrained in Robinhood's DNA.

On January 28, 2021, GameStop briefly reached 483 USD. A month earlier, it was at 18 USD. Retail investors on Reddit turned a physical store selling game discs into a nightmare for Wall Street: the shorted stocks exceeded the float by over 100%, and those waiting for it to go bankrupt ended up bleeding. The leader was Keith Gill, known as Roaring Kitty, who showcased his holdings from 53,000 USD to 48 million, saying to the camera, "I like the stock."

So when Rune's story emerged, it was just a matter of seeing which company he chose, as the community found that no Nasdaq stock could meet the numbers he reported.

However, once the sentiment was right, no one cared about the specifics.

When the community discovered the strange FAMI and JINQIAN on September 2, they quickly identified several key elements: Farmmi, Nasdaq code FAMI, a company in the edible mushroom business, with a product called JINQIANG mushroom, and a very small market cap. All the elements for a US stock meme were in place. (For the logic of US stock memes, refer to "Understanding US Stock Meme Logic Through BONER: Bringing Short Squeezes On-Chain")

The sentiment quickly escalated.

On-chain, FAMI surged tenfold in one hour. Trading volume rapidly exceeded 100 million USD. People rushed into the JINQIAN/FAMI pool to form LPs: 4% fees? Let's go. Slippage? Not important.

The underlying stock wasn't idle either. Nasdaq's FAMI surged over 300% during trading, briefly touching 0.39--0.47 USD, with trading volume expanding to hundreds of millions of shares. The market cap of on-chain FAMI peaked at around 100 million USD, nearly ten to twenty times the entire market cap of the underlying company. A mushroom company that usually went unnoticed saw its daily trading volume match its total for the past few years.

Why It Might Be a Scam

When the hype was at its peak, Rune responded.

He said it wasn't him. The acquisition statement, "I bought 37.4%" and "I plan to tokenize and short squeeze," was written by Claude at his request. The real person behind issuing the token and forming the pool was someone else who borrowed his idea.

After the sentiment subsided, some went to investigate the address that issued the token on-chain. The truth was much more precise than the story.

The on-chain FAMI contract was deployed at 21:34 (UTC) on September 1, a new coin minted just the afternoon before.

Total token supply: 37,430,000 tokens. And Farmmi's underlying stock happens to have around 37.43 million shares. The numbers matched perfectly.

The deployer's first operation was not a purchase but minting: transferring 14,223,400 tokens from the zero address to themselves. Dividing this:

14,223,400 ÷ 37,430,000 ≈ 38.0%, which is what Rune mentioned as 37.4%.

Even the reserved chip ratio was scripted. The coin creator wanted everyone to believe: this was Rune's operation.

But more important than the truth is another matter: this play was missing a crucial piece from the start.

Robinhood has a hard threshold for its stock tokens, clearly stating in its official documentation: only recognizes official contract addresses. If the names and codes are the same but the contract addresses are different, then it is not a Robinhood stock token. On-chain stock tokens can only be minted by designated authorized participants through Robinhood Assets (Jersey), backed by the corresponding held stocks; a community-issued token with the same name does not count. The ability to buy and sell FAMI's underlying stock in the US stock app is on the brokerage page and is entirely separate from the on-chain stock tokens.

The official asset list contains over a hundred codes, including CRM, JNJ, LLY, QCOM, but not FAMI or Farmmi.

This means that there is no FAMI stock token on Robinhood's chain. The soaring FAMI is merely a similarly named token, with no relation to the stock, minted just on September 1.

What does this imply? The real US stock meme play, using stock tokens as the other side of the pool, locking it, and pricing it, requires that the stock is on the official list and that an official stock token exists. FAMI is not on the list. There has never been a "FAMI stock token" on-chain. The FAMI that surged tenfold today is just a similarly named token that borrowed the code, with nothing backing it.

The chain of causation, on-chain funds buying memes → demand for tokenized stocks → issuers buying the underlying stocks on Nasdaq to short squeeze, only holds if "that stock really has an official stock token". FAMI is not on the list.

The narrative is a good narrative. Small-cap stocks being shorted, on-chain interactions, short squeezes, every word strikes a nerve with Robinhood retail investors.

Unfortunately, the best narratives are often the ones that attract wolves. Can retail investors really never win?

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