Ronald Branstetter sat in his basement, his wife and two kids upstairs, scratching his head at how a meme coin named Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) could skyrocket to a $500 million market cap—now $1.4 billion, as of this writing.
He was more of a traditional investor, creating YouTube content about the ebbs and flows of the gold and silver markets, and this kind of volatility wasn’t something he was used to.
For some time, Branstetter had been referring to cryptocurrency (as well as fiat currency) as “Unicorn Fart Dust,” as he felt it didn’t have any inherent value, mostly because you couldn’t touch or feel it—unlike the precious metals he favored.
As such, he decided to create his own meme coin using Solana token launchpad Pump.fun. Little did he know that this innocuous token launch would completely transform his opinion on cryptocurrency.
Branstetter, who operates the Rons Basement channel on YouTube, started a livestream on December 17 to tell his gold and silver community about the crazy crypto bubble he noticed. In this video, he explained how he created Unicorn Fart Dust (UFD) and laughed at how the seemingly worthless token could have a market cap of $7,000.
But that valuation pales in comparison to what it is today.
A few hours after launching the token, Branstetter was at work when he started to receive tons of emails claiming the market cap of UFD was reaching the millions.
“So, I checked it and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s real.’ I called my wife, Susie—she was decorating our Christmas tree—and said: You’re not going to believe this,” Branstetter told Decrypt in an episode of “What’s the Meta?”
“She didn’t believe me,” he continued. “I didn’t believe it. The first night was a state of shock.”
At this point, Branstetter sold half of the tokens that he bought with $100 at launch—profiting approximately $57,000. He now admits that he regrets this decision, as UFD then went parabolic. A month after the launch of his Solana meme coin, the token’s market cap surpassed $420 million; UFD was sitting under $20 million at the time of his sale.
“I know right where I was standing on my dim porch, right outside, when I looked at my phone and I saw $1.2 million,” Branstetter told Decrypt. “Unicorn Fart Dust is my biggest single investment by far. I’m looking at $1.2 million, and I’m like, wow!”
But still, Branstetter didn’t fully cash out once he saw life-changing money in his wallet. He told Decrypt that there was “something in [his] heart” that was preventing him from doing so.
In fact, he plans on never selling, and if he does ultimately plan to do so, he said he will communicate so beforehand to the community of investors. Branstetter hopes that there will be ways for him to monetize the experience further down the road, without the need to sell. He admits that it’s early in the game, however, and is just trying to learn every day.
Through this journey, Unicorn Fart Dust has transformed from a worthless gag into a wholesome community that has rallied behind Branstetter. Together, the group posts silly gags about unicorns and have adopted the mantra, “Good attracts good.”
On Monday, Branstetter announced that he will be purchasing more UFD, scooping up $1,600 worth of the token. He admitted that experience has changed his stance on crypto as a whole.
“What really makes gold valuable is that a lot of people agree that it’s valuable,” Branstetter told Decrypt. “When I look at Unicorn Fart Dust, what I consider to be the world’s best meme coin, it’s about the people. The value is created by the people, and then that eventually creates the price.”
“My perspective on [crypto] completely changed when I realized that the real value proposition is in the community, is in the people,” he added.
On top of this, the economic fundamentals of meme coins piqued his interest. By design, coins created via Pump.fun have a locked supply of tokens—which the UFD community calls beans. This, he believes, is a fundamental reason why the token’s price can increase.
“I have a degree in accounting, I know numbers. When I learned that there were 999 million coins, period, finite, they can never make any more,” Branstetter explained, “I was like: You know, if we keep building the number of people that are buying these beans and holding on to them, that also creates value!”
“It all boils back down to the community,” he finished.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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