Bitcoin's Weirdest Trader Yet? Fly Brain Makes a Profit
TL;DR
A simulated fruit-fly brain named 'Stonkfly' has been trading Bitcoin, achieving a surprising $1 profit shortly after its launch. The experiment connects the fly's neural wiring to Bitcoin price data.
Key points
- A simulated fruit-fly brain trades Bitcoin
- The experiment is called 'Stonkfly'
- The fly made a $1 profit after one day
- It uses the MaleCNS v1.0 connectome
- Trading decisions are based on neural activity
Mentioned in this story
Alex Wormuth
Stonkfly
Bitcoin has no shortage of unusual traders, but a simulated fruit-fly brain might actually be the strangest one to date.
Coinbase's software engineer Alex Wormuth gave a digital simulation based on a fruit fly’s neural wiring $100 to trade Bitcoin.
The system's trading decisions are based on neural activity. One day after launching the experiment, Wormuth reported a rather surprising early result: the fly was up $1.
Update: the fly made a $1 profit pic.twitter.com/PqcuCO01Nb
— Alex Wormuth (@nftechie_) September 11, 2026
The experiment, which has been dubbed "Stonkfly," connects an extremely complex simulation of an adult male fruit fly’s nervous system to Bitcoin price data and Coinbase. It is based on the recently released MaleCNS v1.0 connectome.
The important caveat is that there is no literal living fly sitting in front of a trading terminal (if this is not abundantly clear).
How trading works
Stonkfly takes public BTC-USDC market data from Coinbase and converts it into an RGB visual representation. That image is then fed into thousands of simulated sensory inputs that correspond to neurons in the visual system of the insect.
If the portfolio makes money, Stonkfly stimulates 15 identified PAM11 dopamine neurons. If it loses money, two PPL101 neurons associated with aversive signaling get activated.
Of course, profitable learning has not been demonstrated. A $1 gain could be simply market movement combined with arbitrary trading decisions.
Fly-brain experiments
There has been a flurry of fly-brain experiments after a major neuroscience milestone was announced earlier this month.
With the help of AI, scientists from Google Research and several other institutions produced a complete connectome of the brain and central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly. The map contains 166,700 neurons and captures the wiring extending through the brain, optic lobes, and ventral nerve cord.
The fly can be made to do a surprising number of things. Wormuth previously created DOOMFLY, which connects the same MaleCNS model to the classic video game Doom.
Q&A
How does the Stonkfly experiment work?
The Stonkfly experiment connects a digital simulation of a fruit fly's nervous system to Bitcoin price data, allowing it to make trading decisions based on neural activity.
What was the profit made by the simulated fruit-fly brain?
The simulated fruit-fly brain made a profit of $1 just one day after the trading experiment was launched.
Who created the Stonkfly trading experiment?
The Stonkfly trading experiment was created by Alex Wormuth, a software engineer at Coinbase.
