I invested $100 in Fartcoin and Bitcoin. Here's what happened.

Any time I tell someone what I write about for work — specifically, cryptocurrencies — people always ask the same follow-up question: How can I get rich by investing in crypto? Truthfully, I've wondered the same thing.
I've invested in crypto before, but it was a long time ago — like long enough ago that if I had held onto it, I would probably be rich right now.
So back in January, I set out to see which coins had that 'cha-ching' factor. How would Bitcoin, a 'blue chip' crypto, perform against Fartcoin, a to-the-moon memecoin? Yes, Fartcoin.
In my tool bag: $100 and a dream. The dream?
My husband and I are living in Europe for the summer. We take our yacht to the Monaco Grand Prix. In one hand, I have a Chanel bag (not sure which one yet, but I have time to decide) and in the other, a glass of bubbling Dom Pérignon. I'm wearing a new pair of CELINE sunglasses and a new sundress from Loro Piana. My husband flashes his Rolex Submariner, the sun reflecting on the green bezel. We throw our heads back and laugh that rich laugh — yeah, you know what laugh I'm talking about — the Jeff Bezos laugh.
Now, you might be wondering, 'Well, Logan, how did you pay for it all?!' My Fartcoin gains from this endeavor, of course.
How hard could it be? Plenty of people have done it with memecoins. Case in point: A kid made a meme coin last year, then rug pulled his investors and made $30,000 in one evening. Ethical? No. But, if a 13-year-old can make that much money by scamming people, surely, I could make some cash by simply investing.
Before we get into how Fartcoin performed against Bitcoin, I have a few confessions to make.
Confession No. 1: I've bought Bitcoin before, but it was so long ago that I don't remember when and even how much I invested. I'm pretty sure I made nothing when I sold what little I had. Looking back, I should've held onto it given Bitcoin's meteoric rise in recent years.
Confession No. 2: My only crypto investment is a few shares of a Bitcoin ETF in an individual brokerage account. Those shares are such a small percentage of my portfolio that I don't really notice an impact.
Confession No. 3: Just last year, I hit the major financial benchmarks — emergency fund, manageable debt, diversified portfolio — that many financial advisors recommend achieving before investing in crypto. For my husband and me, that looked like bolstering our emergency savings and working on maxing out retirement contributions.
Does crypto make sense in your portfolio?
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I decided to invest $100 total in two completely different types of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, a more established 'blue chip' coin, and Fartcoin, a wild, even-more-speculative-than-usual memecoin.
With a market cap that rivals the Magnificent 7, Bitcoin offers the relative stability that I wanted, plus it has a use case — albeit debatable. But most of the 'get rich quick with crypto' stories come from investing in memecoins, which have no use case and can skyrocket (or plummet) in a matter of days, sometimes minutes.
Then, I'd hold the coins for 90 days to see how they'd perform, tracking the daily closing price and my portfolio value. I invested Jan. 14 and ended the test drive on April 14.
I bought $50 of Bitcoin on Coinbase — 0.00051795 of a Bitcoin at the time, when the coin closed at $96,534. (All price data are from CoinMarketCap.com.)
But to really make some money, I needed a coin with serious growth potential, like Fartcoin, one of the hottest memecoins of the moment. Created by an AI agent in October 2024, Fartcoin ignited a frenzy, reaching a peak market cap of $2.4 billion in January — thanks to a 55.3 million percent price increase in three months.
1st Fartcoin update of 2025…
So, I bought $50 of Fartcoin. Since I couldn't directly buy Fartcoin on Coinbase, I created a Coinbase Wallet — a self-custody wallet that is a separate product — and purchased $50 of Solana that I could then swap for Fartcoin.
If you're wondering if you read that correctly, yes. You did.
Here's how the two coins I chose stacked up against each other.
Bitcoin
Fartcoin
Market cap
$1.9 trillion*
$1.0 billion*
Price
$96,534.04*
$1.02*
Origin story
The granddaddy of them all, created in 2009
Blowing hot air since 2024
Use case?
Designed to be a decentralized digital currency
Literally nothing
Who invests in it?
Like a lot of people
Me and a bunch of 13-year-olds?
*as of Jan. 14, 2025
Back on a cold day in January, I sat overlooking New York City as I contemplated clicking the 'buy' button on Coinbase. I hit the button, then got up to get a coffee.
When I came back, I glanced at my phone. I had made $5 from my Fartcoin investment and lost $2.51 on my Bitcoin investment in a matter of two minutes. Thoughts began to run through my head.
If I really wanted this to grow, I thought, I could throw a couple of thousand dollars into it after a few paychecks.
OK, but really, is it that bad if I cash out part of my 401(k) and pay the penalties on the early withdrawal to fund my dream of Fartcoin-fueled riches?
I sipped my iced coffee and stared out the window as my mind continued to buzz.
Shoot, I forgot about the capital gains I'll have to pay on the Fartcoin itself. But really, who cares? If I make enough, it'll be a drop in the bucket.
After taking a moment to find some self-control and remind myself that I could lose every dollar just as quickly, I walked away — with dollar signs in my eyes.
Bitcoin
Fartcoin
Starting investment
$50
$50
Highest value
$54.98
$102.63
Value after 90 days
$43.79
$44.73
Total change
-12.42 percent
-10.54 percent
*Values calculated using the closing price.
My Bitcoin investment started off steady, as I expected. The coin was experiencing a rally, because the vibes were vibing. However, the rally was short lived. The price of Bitcoin declined from late February into March because, well, the vibes lost their vibe.
My Bitcoin investment reached its peak value of $54.98 in the first week, when Bitcoin closed at $106,146 on Jan. 21. In the same week, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of nearly $109,115 — a solid week to start this test drive, huh? — but for consistency, I only calculated my portfolio value based on the closing price each day.
Don't let the gain fool you. Because of how tiny my investment was, my portfolio was only up $4.98 from my original $50 investment. From there, the portfolio began its gradual decline to its lowest value of $39.51 on April 8, representing a 21 percent loss from my initial investment.
My Fartcoin investment, on the other hand, took me for a wild ride. Within a week, my $50 investment grew to $102.63. A $50 investment isn't a lot of money, by any means, but to see it double from doing nothing except simply clicking a button had me giddy.
I'm not going to lie, when my portfolio hit its all-time high in January, I Googled how much money I'd actually have to make to afford a new Chanel Classic 11.12 handbag. (I had finally decided on the exact style).
It was in mid-February that I began to lose all hope. Fartcoin's value plummeted just as quickly as it rose, taking my dreams of F1 races, yachts and designer bags with it. By March 10, my Fartcoin investment fell to $10.75, its lowest point in 90 days and an 89.5 percent loss from its peak of $102.63 on Jan. 19. Yikes.
Although my dreams were quickly crushed, I'm still holding onto both coins. I'd like to see what happens to them after a while. Who knows, maybe I'll even buy more, but this 90-day test drive in crypto investing made me realize a few things.
You can hear it all day from investing pros (*cough* me): Crypto is not to be messed with lightly. But, until you put some cash behind an investment, you may not ever really know what it feels like to experience the intense price — and mood — swings.
Bitcoin was one thing — I knew the price would fluctuate a bit. But investing in a memecoin is an entirely different ballgame.
Remember the Bitcoin ETF I mentioned? It definitely experiences some price swings, but I don't check it often and even then the swings aren't huge because I don't own that many shares.
Every time I checked my Fartcoin investment, though, I was sweating. To go from $102 to $49 in less than a week was jarring.
You really don't know what will happen. Crypto prices aren't backed by underlying assets or cash flows, leaving prices susceptible to serious yo-yos based solely on what others are willing to pay. In the crypto community, this is often called hype, or vibes, and it's what drives the market.
Investing in memecoins kind of felt like trying to buy your way into a club you didn't get an invitation to, and you have to figure out the clubhouse rules on your own.
Fartcoin, specifically, was a challenge because — unlike Bitcoin — it isn't available in the Coinbase app, a custodial wallet that manages my private keys (codes/phrases to access my crypto) for me.
To buy Fartcoin, I had to download Coinbase Wallet, a non-custodial wallet, where I was in charge of my private keys and could access the Solana blockchain without being limited by what's available on Coinbase. Essentially, I was juggling two types of wallets at the same time.
Let's also not forget that I will have to manually track my Fartcoin gains and losses for taxes. Coinbase does this for you, while Coinbase Wallet does not. I'm already picturing my tax advisor's face.
It would've been much easier — and more lucrative in the long term — to invest $100 in a broad-based equity ETF or buy an individual stock that pays a great dividend and keep it until I retire, letting it compound. For example, Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) declined by 7.4 percent over the same 90 days — less than my crypto investments.
The thing is, I've already taken the set-it-and-forget-it approach for most of my investments, and there's just something about Fartcoin that makes for a fun story, you know?
After years of reporting on crypto, I've learned that the people who truly get rich are trading crypto daily and dedicate their lives to it.
Don't believe me? Log onto any social media platform and follow a crypto bro. You'll see their candlestick charts, their 3 a.m. technical analysis posts, and there's always one post that reads, 'STOP SELLING YOU IDIOTS,' accompanied by a downward-sloping graph. Most of them lose a lot of money in the process, but some of them get lucky and hit the jackpot on a coin that pops off. Solana comes to mind; even the early Bitcoin investors experienced this.
Meanwhile, I took on this experiment with $100 and a dream. There was, of course, an irrational hope I'd miraculously strike it big without breaking a sweat or investing more money. We've now confirmed that wasn't the case, and it's true for many investors. I would've had to work a lot harder and put a lot more cash upfront and take on some serious risks to maybe make my Monaco dream a reality.
The truth is, getting rich from crypto tends to demand either a full-time obsession with it — staring at screens until your eyes bleed out of your head while analyzing candlesticks — or a morally questionable, illegal scheme to rug pull some poor dude who just opened a Pump.fun account.
Where did this experiment land me? Well, I'm sitting at my desk telling you this tale and definitely not sailing on a yacht. Then again, I only invested $100.
Honestly, the whole experience brought me right back to where I started, minus $11.48. At its highest closing price, I could've cashed out my Fartcoin portfolio and bought a couple very nice lattes here in New York on my way to work.
The reality is, I'll still be fielding questions like, 'What do you do for work?'
And my answer also hasn't changed — I write about investing, but I'm definitely not about to join the crypto millionaire club.
For now, I'll stick to my day job.
Editorial Disclaimer: All investors are advised to conduct their own independent research into investment strategies before making an investment decision. In addition, investors are advised that past investment product performance is no guarantee of future price appreciation.

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• CNN

What would you need to earn to feel financially secure? A quarter of Americans say $150,000 or more

Almost half of Americans (45%) think they would need to make $100,000 or more a year to 'feel financially secure' or 'comfortable,' according to a new survey from Bankrate. Breaking that down further, a quarter of respondents in total (26%) put the number at $150,000 or more. Among them, 8% said they would need to earn between $200,000 and $499,999, while another 8% said $500,000 or more. On the flip side, nearly half of respondents (45%) said they would feel financially secure making less than six figures, with 34% saying they would feel comfortable making between $50,00 and $99,999. The online survey, conducted by YouGov and taken by 2,260 US adults in mid-May, also asked 'What annual income would you need to feel rich/attain financial freedom?' More than half (55%) put the number at $200,000 or more. Among them, a quarter (26%) said it would take at least $1 million a year, while 13% said they would need to earn somewhere between $500,000 and $999,999. More than half of respondents (56%) said they needed to earn more than they are currently making to feel secure. So what do Americans make in reality? Based on the latest Census data, median US household income in 2023 was $80,610. That's the mid-point on incomes, meaning half of US households made less. But that median is across all households regardless of size. In family households specifically — where two or more people live — the median was $102,800. Within that group, the highest median ($119,400) reported was among married couples. In terms of individual incomes in 2023, the median income of a full-time worker with earnings working year round was $60,070. Neither the Bankrate survey nor the respondents specified what was meant by the terms 'financially secure' or 'rich,' nor what financial freedom meant to them. The answer, of course, will always be highly subjective. How much you personally think you need is going to be influenced by many factors, including: Your current income, your age, whether you have children, where you live, how much debt you have and what your monthly expenses are. (Not to mention assets that contribute to your net worth, such as a 401(k) or brokerage account, a home or a business. But the survey didn't address that issue.) Among Bankrate survey respondents, 54% of those who already made $100,000 or more said they'd need to make at least $150,000 to feel financially secure. Gen Xers (ages 45 to 60) were most likely (35%) to say they'd need to earn $150,000 or more to live comfortably, compared to 26% of millennials (ages 29 to 44) and 20% of Gen Zers (ages 18 to 28). Among parents with children under 18, 35% indicated earning $150,000 or more a year would make them feel financially secure. And those most likely to say they'd need to earn $1 million or more to feel financially free were parents whose children were 18 or older (33%). Bankrate asked respondents how they would describe their current level of financial security. Overall, most (77%) said they did not feel 'completely financially secure,' including 32% who said they didn't think they ever would. Those most likely to say they did feel 'completely financially secure' were people making at least $100,000. Within that income group, 42% of respondents said they considered themselves secure. Only a quarter of those in the $50,000 to $79,999 income group and 12% of those making less than $50,000 said the same. In terms of life stages, large majorities of each generation said they don't feel financially secure, including 84% of Gen Xers; 80% of Gen Zers; 79% of millennials and 69% of Baby Boomers. 'Getting rich may have once been what many Americans fantasized about, but now, simply living comfortably feels like the new aspiration, as economic challenges make financial stability a rare luxury,' said Bankrate economic analyst Sarah Foster.