These 4 Crypto Stories Sound Like April Fools’ Jokes, But They’re All Real
It is April Fool’s Day, which implies the web is on high alert for pretend headlines. In crypto, that intuition ought to be a year-round dedication.
The tokens under weren’t pranks. They launched on actual blockchains, attracted actual cash, and left very actual bagholders. Together, they train extra about due diligence than any joke ever may.
A Token Named After Flatulence Hit $2.5 Billion
Because apparently the market was working out of great issues to fund, Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) launched on Solana in October 2024. Its origin story is precisely what it feels like. An AI chatbot known as Truth Terminal, constructed by researcher Andy Ayrey, made fart jokes.
Fans determined that was value tokenizing.
Within three months, (*4*). It reached that milestone quicker than Dogecoin (DOGE), which wanted eight years. Let that sink in.
A flatulence token outpaced the OG meme coin.
By January 19, 2025, FARTCOIN peaked at $2.48 per token and a $2.5 billion valuation. Truth Terminal itself grew to become what some known as the primary AI crypto millionaire. Marc Andreessen had given the bot $50,000 in Bitcoin (BTC).
As of April 2026, FARTCOIN trades round $0.17 with a market cap close to $175 million. That is a 93% decline from peak. Thousands of wallets now maintain a token named after a bodily perform that has misplaced almost all its worth. No AI chatbot is coming to save lots of them.
Yet, essentially the most absurd lore is that Fartcoin remains to be the 183rd ranked crypto, primarily based on market capitalization.
A Developer Burned $10 Million by Accident, and the Price Went Up
SLERF launched on Solana on March 18, 2024. It raised $10 million in a presale. What occurred subsequent belongs in a museum of human error.
The nameless developer unintentionally despatched all the presale token allocation and liquidity pool tokens to a burn tackle. Gone. Permanently. Mint authority had already been revoked, so there was no undo button, no hotfix, no “have you ever tried turning it on and off once more.”
“Guys I fucked up. I burned the LP and the tokens that have been put aside for the airdrop. Mint authority is already revoked so I can’t mint them. There is nothing I can do to repair this. I’m so fucking sorry,” Slerfsol posted on X.
The developer posted this admission publicly, and credit score the place it’s due, a minimum of they have been trustworthy about it.
Here is the place the story will get actually absurd. Instead of crashing to zero, SLERF surged.
The sheer spectacle attracted speculators like moths to a really costly flame. Within 24 hours, buying and selling quantity hit $2.5 billion, briefly surpassing Ethereum (ETH) and USDC. The market cap peaked at $450 million. For a token whose treasury had simply been incinerated.
By April 2026, SLERF trades at roughly $0.003 with a market cap round $3 million. That is a 99.7% decline. The $10 million in presale funds stays completely destroyed. Somewhere on Solana, a burn tackle holds the most costly typo in meme coin historical past.
A 13-Year-Old Rugged a Token on Camera, Then the Internet Found Him
On November 20, 2024, a teen launched a token known as QUANT on Pump.fun during a livestream. Eight minutes later, he dumped every thing for roughly $30,000.
The second was captured stay. The 13-year-old celebrated his income and flipped off the digicam.
What occurred subsequent was each poetic and disturbing. The crypto group launched a “revenge pump,” shopping for QUANT particularly to spite the younger developer, pushing the market cap to $35 million inside hours. The irony was brutal.
Had {the teenager} merely held, his stake would have been value over $1 million. He selected $30,000 and an web mob as an alternative.
The aftermath spiraled. Community members doxxed {the teenager}, publishing his house tackle and college. His mom obtained abusive messages on Instagram.
Adults spent hundreds of thousands on a token created by a toddler, then harassed that baby when he behaved precisely like a toddler would. QUANT is now successfully useless, with no recorded trades in over 29 days.
The teenager later launched apology tokens. None gained traction. Forgiveness, it seems, has no liquidity.
“The World’s Most Honest Crypto” Promised Nothing and Hit $450 Million
If SLERF was an accident and QUANT was a rip-off, Useless (USELESS) was one thing rarer in crypto. It was clear.
USELESS launched on Solana through LetsBONK.enjoyable in May 2025 with a pitch that may make any enterprise capitalist weep. No roadmap, no group allocation, no VC vesting, no ecosystem fund, and no utility. The total 1 billion token provide was accessible from day one, and mint authority was completely renounced.
Naturally, the market cherished it. USELESS went from a $200,000 market cap to $40 million in a single week. It then dropped 87.5% to $5 million. Then it recovered to $250 million in a month. By October 2025, it peaked at $450 million market capitalization.
Coinbase, Kraken, and Gate.io all listed it. Major exchanges gave shelf area to a token that advised them, to their face, that it does nothing. As of April 2026, USELESS maintains a market cap of round $32 million.
Here is the twist. Unlike most tokens on this listing, USELESS didn’t rug pull, didn’t collapse 99%. A token that promised completely nothing might have been essentially the most trustworthy mission on this total lineup.
A Due Diligence Checklist for Every Day, Not Just April 1
These 4 tasks share a sample that ought to concern anybody paying consideration. None supplied a working product, a reputable group with public identities, or a use case past hypothesis. Yet collectively they attracted billions of {dollars}.
Between January 2024 and March 2025, over seven million tokens have been deployed on Pump.enjoyable alone. According to DappRadar knowledge, 98.6% of these with a minimum of 5 trades collapsed into nugatory pump-and-dump schemes. The remaining 1.4% consists of FARTCOIN.
The lesson is just not that every one meme cash are scams. USELESS operated with extra transparency than some tokens with 50-page whitepapers. The lesson is that the absence of utility, accountability, and even fundamental seriousness doesn’t decelerate capital one bit.
Today, everybody double-checks headlines earlier than sharing them. Tomorrow, most will return to aping into tokens primarily based on a Telegram screenshot. Here is what to ask earlier than shopping for something.
Can you confirm who constructed it? Is there a working product, or only a web site and a gaggle chat? Has the good contract been audited by a good agency? What does the token distribution appear like, and are insiders holding a disproportionate share? Does the valuation replicate utilization, or simply vibes?
SLERF’s developer had butterfingers. QUANT’s creator was a toddler who handled a blockchain like a lemonade stand. FARTCOIN emerged from an AI’s toilet humor. USELESS advised everybody the reality upfront and was rewarded for it.
In each case, the data was proper there. The solely query was whether or not anybody bothered to look earlier than clicking “purchase.”
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