Fartcoin, Greenland And The Financial Crisis Straight Ahead

We surely are not surprised. Donald Trump is off to an exceedingly bad start, chasing hobgoblins by the name of Canada, Greenland and Panama. Yet these utterly insensible digressions are just more proof he has no coherent game plan to contend with the fiscal and financial time bombs that are going to be detonating all around him after January 20th.

We are referring to the mother of all fiscal crises that will be triggered within months when the US Treasury runs out of both cash and borrowing authority under the reinstated $36.1 trillion debt ceiling. And that may not even be the first inning. The stock market has now reached a point of such extreme “irrational exuberance” that even Alan Greenspan couldn’t have imagined it when he invented the term several decades ago.

For want of doubt, consider what has happened to one of the shiny objects in the crypto space in recent weeks. We are referring to a financial product aptly called “Fartcoin”, which is a newly minted cryptocurrency most assuredly worth $0.000. That is, it pays no interest or dividend, earns nothing, has a zero use case and exists solely to feed upon some of the oceanic volume of speculative credit the Fed has unleashed upon the financial system.

Nevertheless, in a matter of weeks Fartcoin has skyrocketed from an initial market cap (ICO) of $3 million on October 18 to a recent peak of $1.5 billion on January 3rd. That’s a 510X gain in barely 70 days, including weekends and Christmas.

Fartcoin Market Cap Since October 18, 2024

As the astute folk at QTR put it,

……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 2,940% ascent 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.