Shares of Chinese agricultural-products supplier Farmmi, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker FAMI, climbed from the previous session’s close of $0.1187 to an intraday high of $0.50 on Sept. 2, according to TradingView. The stock ended the session at $0.1501.

Trading volume totaled 867.2 million shares, compared with 5.76 million on Sept. 1, according to Yahoo Finance. The roughly 150-fold increase coincided with a rapid rise in Money Mushroom, or JINQIAN, a memecoin paired with an unofficial FAMI token on Robinhood Chain.

A fabricated acquisition claim fueled speculation

The episode followed an Aug. 31 post on X by a crypto trader using the pseudonym Rune. He claimed to have spent $1.8 million to acquire 37.4% of a Nasdaq-listed company with a market capitalization of about $4.8 million, a share price near $0.12, $6.2 million in debt, $380,000 in annual recurring revenue and alleged short interest of 92.3%.

Rune proposed tokenizing the purported shares on Robinhood Chain and launching a memecoin paired with them. Under his concept, demand for the memecoin would generate demand for an onchain version of the stock, potentially spill into the traditional equity market and trigger a short squeeze.

Crypto users identified Farmmi as a possible match. In its annual report for fiscal 2025, the company referred to a shiitake variety called Jinqian, which translates as “money mushroom.” A Money Mushroom token using the ticker JINQIAN subsequently appeared on Robinhood Chain.

Rune later said the acquisition story was untrue and had been generated by Claude at his request. He described the figures and other parameters as “made up or exaggerated” and denied involvement in issuing either FAMI or JINQIAN.

Onchain FAMI mirrored Farmmi figures

An unidentified user created a Farmmi, Inc. token on Sept. 1 with a supply of 37.43 million FAMI. That figure closely matched the 37,434,077 Class A shares Farmmi expected to have outstanding after issuing 7 million new shares, according to its SEC prospectus.

One address received 23.2 million tokens, while another 14.22 million, or about 38% of the supply, remained with the developer, according to The Defiant. The latter figure was close to Rune’s purported 37.4% stake. The outlet also reported that the same address deployed a PoolRepricer contract and used it to alter liquidity-pool parameters. There is no evidence that Rune issued the token.

Token and stock peaked in the same period

The main JINQIAN/FAMI pool was created at 9:32 a.m. Eastern time on Sept. 2, two minutes after Nasdaq trading opened, according to The Defiant. JINQIAN rose from about $0.00089 to $0.0761 by 10:45 a.m., an approximately 85-fold increase. DEX Screener data showed trading volume in the pair exceeded $90 million during its first few hours.

Farmmi shares reached their $0.50 intraday high at about the same time. JINQIAN’s market capitalization briefly reached approximately $60 million, several times Farmmi’s value before the rally. The source described the episode as a likely speculative loop in which JINQIAN’s rise drew attention to onchain FAMI and social-media discussion prompted some traders to buy Farmmi shares through traditional brokers.

FAMI was not backed by Farmmi shares

Buying JINQIAN or the paired FAMI token did not automatically result in buying Farmmi shares, The Defiant emphasized. Robinhood’s documentation says its official Stock Tokens are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited and provide economic exposure to underlying shares or exchange-traded funds.

Robinhood instructs users to verify contract addresses against its official registry. The onchain FAMI contract was identified as an ERC-20 token but did not appear in that registry. It had no official issuer or Robinhood-defined issuance and redemption mechanism linking it to Farmmi shares.

The prices also diverged: when Farmmi stock reached $0.50, onchain FAMI traded at about $1.83 in one pool and later remained at a substantial premium, according to The Defiant.

Farmmi had received a Nasdaq notice on Aug. 11 after its shares closed below the exchange’s $1 minimum bid requirement for 30 consecutive trading days. The company must record a closing price of at least $1 for a minimum of 10 consecutive trading days by Feb. 8, 2027, to regain compliance.

Source: Incrypted