Farmmi Shares Surge as Much as 350% as Robinhood Chain Meme-Coin Frenzy Spills Over

Shares of Farmmi Inc., a Nasdaq-listed Chinese agricultural products company, surged as much as 350% intraday as speculative demand for a related meme coin on Robinhood Chain spilled into the stock.

The Block reported on September 2 that Farmmi shares briefly climbed to $0.50 during the session, up from a previous close of about $0.12. The stock later surrendered much of the gain and fell back to around $0.18.

Trading volume also soared. More than 720 million Farmmi shares changed hands, roughly 90 times the stock's average daily volume. Farmmi sells agricultural products including edible dried mushrooms.

The spike coincided with heavier trading in JINQIAN, a meme coin tied to an on-chain token using Farmmi's ticker symbol, FAMI, on Robinhood Chain. Dexscreener data showed JINQIAN's fully diluted valuation briefly reached $60 million, about 10 times the market value of the actual Nasdaq-listed company.

Robinhood Chain has recently seen a growing practice of pairing meme coins with tokenized stocks instead of stablecoins, Bitcoin or Ether. Examples include Artificial Inu, or AI, linked to tokenized Nvidia shares, and Memory Cow Moo, or MOO, tied to Micron.

The Farmmi case is structurally different from earlier examples. Farmmi has only 15 employees, and its market capitalization before the surge was in the low millions of dollars. That contrasts with earlier meme-coin trading pairs based on liquid large-cap stocks such as Nvidia and Micron.

The FAMI token traded on Robinhood Chain also appears to have been issued independently by a third party rather than officially by Robinhood. Unlike tokens linked to Nvidia or Micron, there appears to be no mechanism through which issuance and redemption of the token would lead to purchases of actual Nasdaq-listed Farmmi shares.

Market participants see the speculative frenzy around the on-chain FAMI token and JINQIAN as having spilled over into Farmmi's stock. Investors who spotted the meme coin's rapid gains may have bought the listed shares through brokerages as well, sending both the share price and trading volume sharply higher.