Bitcoin's Weirdest Trader Yet? Fly Brain Makes a Profit

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.