OFFBEAT

Disembodied fruit fly brain joins the crypto speculation swarm

Coinbase engineer gives simulated insect $100 and lets its neurons make the trades

If you want to understand how 2026 is going, in March The Register reported that scientists had connected a simulated fruit fly brain to a virtual body and let it wander around a virtual world. Now another simulated fly nervous system is trading crypto.

Behold Stonkfly, the brainchild of Coinbase software engineer Alex Wormuth. His X post boasted: "I gave the fly brain $100 to trade bitcoin. Dopamine neurons are stimulated when the fly makes profit. Neuron activity controls buy/sell decisions and makes trades on coinbase. Will the fly get rich?"

Well, all we can say is Alex should question his life choices. But really, more stupid things have happened this year, like the US president suggesting he could bring in the military to correct a misbehaving bond market.

Keen readers will recall that researchers at Eon Systems took several preexisting components: a fruit fly brain scan, a tool for modeling neurons, a model of some of the fly's muscles and body, and a very simple virtual environment. After connecting them, the team claimed that the result displayed some of the behavior of a real insect.