Written by: Little Cookie

On September 2, Nasdaq-listed company Farmmi (FAMI) surged from $0.12 to $0.50 during trading, an increase of about 350%. The trading volume that day reached 720 million shares, nearly 90 times the daily average. This micro agricultural company, headquartered in China and primarily engaged in the sale of edible dried mushrooms, with only 15 full-time employees, suddenly became one of the craziest stocks in the U.S. stock market that day.

Subsequently, the stock price quickly fell back to about $0.18, with the phenomenon of rapid growth and collapse completed within a few hours.

The catalyst came from Robinhood Chain. A meme coin named JINQIAN formed a trading pair with an on-chain asset using the "FAMI" code. GMGN data showed that JINQIAN reached an implied valuation of about $60 million at its peak, roughly 10 times Farmmi's then stock market value.

But there is a fact that was severely overlooked during the dissemination of the event: the on-chain FAMI token is not an officially issued stock token by Robinhood.

Difference Between Official Tokens and Unofficial Tokens

On Robinhood Chain, Artificial Inu (AI) forms a trading pair with tokenized NVDA, and Memory Cow Moo (MOO) forms a trading pair with tokenized MU. The operation of these "stock-paired meme coins" relies on one premise: stock tokens are issued officially by Robinhood and backed by real stock collateral at a 1:1 ratio. When on-chain trading pushes up the demand for stock tokens, the issuer needs to buy an equivalent amount of real stocks to mint new tokens, forming a transmission from on-chain to U.S. stocks.

The FAMI token in the JINQIAN/FAMI trading pair does not have this mechanism. It is an independently issued on-chain asset that borrows the stock code of Farmmi but lacks a minting/redeeming channel, real stock collateral, and any arbitrage relationship with Nasdaq.

On-chain analyst riley_gmi confirmed this on X: the on-chain FAMI is not listed among the official stock tokens by Robinhood.

The logic of official stock-paired meme coins is: on-chain demand → minting tokens → buying real stocks → generating real buy pressure.

The logic of JINQIAN/FAMI is completely different: on-chain frenzy → social media dissemination → traders believing in stock mapping → influx of real stocks through brokers → stock price skyrockets, reinforcing the meme narrative.

There is no mechanical transmission; the only medium of transmission is human attention and misunderstanding.

Why Did It Succeed This Time?

Farmmi being selected was not coincidental.

Its stock price was $0.12, and its market value was only a few million dollars. For such a small stock, with very low trading volume and shallow liquidity, when suddenly hundreds or even thousands of traders simultaneously enter, the price can easily be pushed up by 350%. In contrast, NVDA in the AI/NVDA pair belongs to a company with a market capitalization of $50 trillion; even with $3.3 million in tokenized Nvidia in the on-chain pool, its impact on the real stock price is zero.

The code "FAMI" itself also has utility. It uses the same visual language as the official stock tokens that exist on the Robinhood Chain — the code, trading pairs, K line charts on GMGN, making it difficult for ordinary traders to distinguish between official tokens and imitations at first glance.

When JINQIAN was trading at a valuation of $60 million, Farmmi's real market value was about $6 million. An implied valuation of an on-chain asset reaching 10 times the underlying reference, and that reference being a mushroom company completely unrelated to memes, is itself the strongest social media material.

Reverse Transmission

In the past two years, the direction of price transmission between the crypto market and U.S. stocks has been very clear: U.S. stock prices determine stock token prices. When Tesla's earnings report exceeds expectations, tokenized TSLA rises. When Nvidia's stock price hits a new high, on-chain NVDA rises simultaneously. Information and prices flow from the traditional market to on-chain.

The FAMI incident clearly demonstrated the possibility of reverse transmission for the first time: on-chain activities affected the real stock prices.

This reverse transmission does not require any formal minting/redemption mechanism. It only requires three conditions:

A sufficiently small stock (extremely low daily trading volume), a sufficiently loud on-chain narrative (Meme coin $60 million valuation), and a sufficiently ambiguous visual association (same code).

When these three factors overlap, traders' attention can cross the boundary between on-chain and off-chain, transforming false token relationships into real stock buy pressure.

This serves as a footnote to Rune's (@RuneCrypto_) claim to acquire Nasdaq micro-stocks and create a short squeeze with meme coins: Rune is still in the conceptual stage, while the FAMI incident has already provided a naturally occurring prototype. The difference is that Rune is attempting to establish a formal minting/redemption channel to generate real buy pressure, while the FAMI incident proves that not even a formal channel is necessary — similar codes and social dissemination are enough.

What will happen next?

The FAMI incident exposed a structural loophole: anyone can create a token on Robinhood Chain using any publicly traded company's stock code, form a trading pair with a meme coin, and then wait for the social media effect to spill over into the real stock market.

This presents a new risk variable for thousands of Nasdaq and OTC micro-stocks. For the SEC, it represents a regulatory gray area: the on-chain FAMI token is not a security, and the act of creating a trading pair may not be illegal, but the resulting abnormal movements in U.S. stock prices constitute a de facto market disruption.

Farmmi closed that day at about $0.18, down 64% from the intraday high of $0.50. How many traders amongst the 720 million shares traded knew that the on-chain FAMI was not an official stock token is a question that cannot be answered.

This mushroom selling company most likely has never heard of JINQIAN. But from today onward, each Nasdaq micro company's IR department may need to ask a new question: Is anyone creating a meme coin using our code on-chain?