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One of the strangest stock rallies of the year belongs to a mushroom company.

Farmmi, a tiny Nasdaq-listed supplier of dried mushrooms, saw its shares surge more than 300% on Sept. 2. 

For context, the company didn't announce a deal, an earnings beat, or anything at all. 

What happened was much weirder, a memecoin, a joke cryptocurrency created to ride a moment of internet attention, was named after one of Farmmi's mushrooms. That alone was enough to send traders buying the shares.

The coin, called JINQIAN after the "jinqian" or "money" mushroom that Farmmi sells, launched on a crypto trading platform run by Robinhood, paired with a token that claimed to represent Farmmi's stock.

Within an hour, traders had bid the coin up to a value of about $70 million, according to blockchain analytics account Lookonchain. At its peak, the memecoin was briefly worth several times more than the actual company.

Then the frenzy jumped into the real stock market.

Farmmi shares rocketed from about 12 cents to as high as 50 cents by mid-morning, a gain of roughly 321%. More than 800 million shares traded by the afternoon. On a normal day, Farmmi trades about 5 million.

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The token that claimed to represent Farmmi's stock wasn't legitimate. 

Robinhood's official stock tokens are issued through a formal process and are backed by real claims. This one was created by an anonymous user, carried no backing at all, and gave holders no claim on anything. On a blockchain, anyone can create a token and name it after a company, which is exactly what happened here.

Farmmi itself never said a word connecting the company to the coin. The stock rose anyway, on attention alone.

It didn't last. By late afternoon, Farmmi had given back most of the gain, closing the session near 15 cents, still up about 27% on the day.

Public blockchain records show one anonymous trader put roughly $19,000 into JINQIAN early, then sold the entire position about an hour later for around $198,000, a profit of approximately $178,600, according to Lookonchain. 

The stake grew more than tenfold before most people had heard the coin existed.

Almost everyone who arrived later did far worse. The coin collapsed more than 90% from its peak within hours, and by the time of writing it was worth about $6.6 million in total, a fraction of its brief $70 million high.

At the time of writing, JINQIAN was trading at about $0.0066, giving the memecoin a market capitalization of roughly $6.6 million, well below its earlier peak. 

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This story was originally published by TheStreet on Sep 2, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.