Author: @Mrjacknicee
On September 2, on the Robinhood chain, a token named JINQIAN CA:0xe81880c1c5054245e036359f5c7be31606e79f56 reached a market capitalization of over $70 million in just one hour.
JINQIAN, the Chinese pinyin for "money," is associated with the Nasdaq-listed company Farmmi, which grows shiitake mushrooms; Farmmi’s annual report indeed lists a shiitake variety called Jinqian mushroom, which the community refers to as the "money mushroom."
Meanwhile, the underlying stock of Farmmi on Nasdaq, ticker FAMI, surged over 300% during trading, briefly reaching near $0.40, with volume spiking to hundreds of millions of shares. A micro-cap company that had been trading around $0.12 just days ago with a market cap of just over $4 million suddenly became the most prominent stock on the board.
On-chain, a token called 'FAMI' has been rising alongside JINQIAN and has been pumped, at one point exceeding $100 million.
The story begins two days ago.
A good story
On August 31, crypto trader Rune (@RuneCrypto_) tweeted that he spent approximately $1.8 million to acquire 37.4% of a low-market-cap Nasdaq-listed company via OTC. He provided precise figures: a market cap of about $4.8 million, a share price of roughly $0.12, and a short interest of 92.3%—meaning nearly the entire float had been borrowed for short selling.
His next move isn’t hidden either: tokenize this stock on Robinhood Chain, then launch a paired meme coin to use on-chain funds to buy the actual shares and trigger a short squeeze—a move that forces short sellers to buy back shares at the peak to cover their positions.
This is clearly a good story. Short squeezing is a narrative ingrained in Robinhood's DNA.
On January 28, 2021, GameStop surged to $483 intraday, up from just $18 a month earlier. Retail investors on Reddit turned a physical video game store into Wall Street’s nightmare: short-sold shares once exceeded 100% of the float, as traders bet on its collapse—only to be crushed by the buying surge. The leader was Keith Gill, known online as Roaring Kitty, who publicly displayed his position growing from $53,000 to $48 million, telling viewers: “I like the stock.”
So, once Rune's story came out, all that remained was to see which company he had chosen, because the community found that no Nasdaq stock could simultaneously match the set of numbers he reported.
But when emotions are high, you just don't care anymore.
When the community discovered the strange FAMI and JINQIAN on September 2, it quickly triggered recognition of several key elements: Farmmi, NASDAQ ticker FAMI, a company in the edible mushroom business with a product called JINQIANG mushrooms, and an extremely small market cap. All the ingredients for a US stock meme were present—let’s go. (For an explanation of US stock meme logic, see “Understanding US Meme Stocks Through BONER: Bringing Short Squeezes On-Chain”)
Emotions quickly escalated.
FAMI on-chain surged tenfold in one hour. Trading volume quickly surpassed $100 million. People flooded into the JINQIAN/FAMI liquidity pool: 4% fee? Go. Slippage? Doesn't matter.
The underlying stock wasn’t idle either. FAMI on Nasdaq surged over 300% during trading, briefly reaching $0.39–$0.47, with volume spiking to hundreds of millions of shares. On-chain, FAMI’s market cap peaked near $100 million—roughly ten to twenty times the entire market cap of the underlying company. A once-obscure mushroom company saw a single-day trading volume equal to its total volume over the past several years.
Why it might be a scam
When things got heated, Rune stepped in to respond.
He didn’t do it himself, he said. The acquisition statement—“I bought 37.4%,” “I’m planning to tokenize a short squeeze”—was written by Claude at his request and then published. The person who actually launched the token on-chain and created the liquidity pool was someone else who borrowed his idea.
After the emotional tide receded, someone looked up the on-chain address where the token was issued. The truth is far more precise than the story.
The FAMI contract on-chain was deployed on September 1 at 21:34 UTC, just hours after the token was minted the previous afternoon.
Total token supply: 37,430,000. Meanwhile, the common shares of Farmmi also amount to approximately 37.43 million shares. The numbers align perfectly.
The deployer's first action was not buying, but minting: transferring 14,223,400 tokens from the zero address to themselves. Divide by:
14,223,400 ÷ 37,430,000 ≈ 38.0%, which is what Rune mentioned as 37.4%.
Even the proportion of reserved筹码 is staged according to the script. The people minting the coins want everyone to believe: this is all Rune’s doing.
But more important than真假 is another thing: this玩法 has been missing a crucial piece from the very beginning.
Robinhood has a hard requirement for its stock tokens, as clearly stated in its official documentation: only the official contract address is recognized. Even if the name and code are identical, if the contract address differs, it is not a Robinhood stock token. Stock tokens on-chain can only be minted by authorized parties designated by Robinhood Assets (Jersey), with underlying custodied stocks backing them; a community-issued token with the same name does not qualify. Trading the actual FAMI stock within the Robinhood app is part of its brokerage service and is entirely separate from on-chain stock tokens.
There are over a hundred codes on the official asset list, such as CRM, JNJ, LLY, and QCOM, but not FAMI or Farmmi.
In other words, there is no FAMI stock token on Robinhood’s blockchain. The FAMI that surged in price is merely a coin with the same name, unrelated to the stock, and was minted on September 1st.
What does this mean? True US stock meme玩法 involves using stock tokens as the other side of the pool, locking them, and pricing them—on the condition that the underlying stock is first listed officially and has an official stock token. FAMI is not on the official list at all. There has never been a “FAMI stock token” on-chain. The FAMI that surged tenfold today is merely a coin that borrowed the same name as the code, with nothing backing it.
That chain of传导—funds on the chain buying memes → demand for tokenized stocks → issuers buying the underlying shares on Nasdaq to short squeeze—only holds true if “that stock actually has an official stock token.” FAMI is not on the list.
The narrative is a compelling one. Each term—shorted micro-cap stocks, on-chain联动, short squeeze—strikes a nerve with Robinhood retail investors.
Unfortunately, the best narrative fears most is the arrival of the wolf. Can retail investors really never win?