On Sunday night, on the Robinhood chain, the HIMS token was priced at $132.64.
Its underlying stock, Hims & Hers, an internet healthcare company selling men's health products, had a closing price of $28.84 on Friday. The on-chain shadow was more than four times the price of the actual stock.
Driving this shadow is another token. Its name is BONER, a name so straightforward it doesn't need translation: this company's main business is men's health, and the token's narrative is "hard currency" and "squeezing HIMS shorts".
In the 24 hours around Monday, BONER surged approximately 1000%, pushing its market cap to the $40 million range. At Monday's opening, the newly minted token brought the premium down, aligning the shadow with the actual stock. However, BONER's price continued to rise.
The meme stock craze, the 2026 version, moved the short squeeze business from the NYSE to the blockchain. The formula remained the same as in 2021: attention, leverage, a "short squeeze" story. Only this time, the battle took place in a small pond where no shares could be printed over the weekend.
The Night of $483
On January 28, 2021, GME touched $483 intraday.
Just a month earlier, it was lounging at $18. GameStop, a physical store selling game discs, became the nightmare of Wall Street as a Reddit forum called r/wallstreetbets bought up the stock. The short sellers, who borrowed shares, sold them, bet on the price going down, and planned to buy them back cheaper, found themselves in a precarious position as retail investors poured real money into the stock.
The leader was Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty. He flaunted his positions online: starting at $53,000, by the end of January, the numbers in his account read $48 million. He famously said to the camera, "I like the stock." This phrase became the centerpiece of the entire event.
That year, many people first heard the term "short squeeze" in a notification from Robinhood.
Robinhood found itself at the center of the storm. Offering zero-commission trades, fractional shares, and the ability to trade at the tap of a phone screen, it was the most convenient entry point for retail traders. But at the other end of the entry was a valve. On January 28, Robinhood restricted buying of stocks like GME, allowing only selling. Retail traders watched the prices plunge on the app and called it a "betrayal."
On February 18th, during the hearing, CEO Vlad Tenev stated that the trading restrictions were imposed to meet the clearinghouse's margin requirements and were a last resort. What retail investors heard was: "You're preventing me from buying to let the shorts off the hook." AOC's question was the toughest, asking why institutions could still trade while retail investors were cut off. In the same hearing, Keith Gill's video filter malfunctioned, showing a cat's face on the screen. He said, "I am not a cat, nor am I a hedge fund." The whole room laughed. After the laughter, no one thought it was a joke.
Within a few days, GME dropped from $483 to $90. Most of those who jumped in last became liquidity providers.
In July of that year, Robinhood went public at a price of $38. The prospectus revealed that its user accounts rose from 12.5 million to 22.5 million. That short squeeze became its own advertisement. From then on, Robinhood had a birthmark: it was not only the entryway for retail investors but also the hand that cut them off. Five years later, this birthmark blossomed on the chain.
Underlying Stock, Shadow Stock, and Chip
In July 2026, Robinhood launched its own chain, a layer-two network based on Arbitrum Orbit (simply put, a new chain built on top of Ethereum), focusing on tokenized U.S. stocks: packaging U.S. stocks into on-chain tokens, enabling 24/7 trading for non-U.S. users.
The U.S. stock meme was hence split into two layers. One layer is buying underlying stocks in the app, such as GME and WEN. The other layer consists of "stock-coin pairs" on the chain. When creating a meme coin, the other side of the liquidity pool is no longer ETH or USDT but tokenized versions of NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, and GME.
Here are three layers, often confused as one:
Underlying Stock: The actual stock on the NYSE. It holds shareholder rights, can be shorted, and can be loaned out. Shorts borrow from this layer.
Stock Token: The on-chain representation of the underlying stock. Usually corresponds to custodied shares but does not represent ownership, lacks voting rights, and issuance and redemption are controlled by the issuer, often with only tens of thousands of tokens in circulation.
U.S. Stock Meme: An independently issued meme coin that uses stock tokens as trading pairs. It is not backed and does not have a 1:1 peg.
Buying BONER ≠ Buying HIMS Token ≠ Buying HIMS Stock. Stock tokens in the pool belong to the liquidity pool, not to you.
The gameplay is as follows: the frontend still uses ETH for trading, but the backend first exchanges ETH for stock tokens, and then enters the pool to exchange for memes. The creator's fee is also settled in stock tokens. There is only one line for the price formula:
The USD price of the meme = (How many stock tokens one meme can be exchanged for) × (USD price of the stock token)
This is a double bet: betting that the meme outperforms that stock, while also being exposed to the ups and downs of the stock itself. If NVDA rises, both the meme and NVDA will rise, resulting in multiplied USD gains; if the stock drops, even if the meme outperforms, the USD gains will be discounted.
In August, these three things converged in a coin called BONER.
A Coin Called BONER
On August 20, BONER was launched on the LONG platform of the Robinhood chain. The main pool is BONER/HIMS, with the quote asset not being a stablecoin, but the on-chain shadow of HIMS.
The community page displays a set of data: approximately 62 million shares of short HIMS, accounting for about one-third of the circulating supply.
The real engine is a more subtle mechanism.
The path to buy BONER: stablecoin or ETH → first exchange into HIMS tokens → deposit HIMS into the BONER/HIMS pool to exchange for BONER. The liquidity pool is where assets are locked in and trades are automatically matched according to the formula. Once HIMS is in the pool, it is locked in and cannot be withdrawn.
After about ten days of trading, there are approximately 58,714 HIMS coins issued on-chain, with 31,198 coins, about 53%, locked in the BONER/HIMS main pool. There are also 1,424 coins scattered in other meme pools. Only about 20,303 coins are left for price discovery in the HIMS/stablecoin and HIMS/ETH pools.
How big is the entire on-chain HIMS pie? Assuming the stock is priced at $29, the total on-chain supply is approximately $1.7 million, which is calculated by multiplying the total supply by the stock price, excluding any dilution. After half of it is devoured by a meme pool, the freely tradable portion left to anchor the stock price is as thin as paper.
Then it collided with the weekend.
The NYSE was closed. The issuer needs to acquire the underlying stock before minting new tokens, and there is minimal minting over the weekend. The remaining HIMS/USDG pool has very shallow liquidity, and a small trade can cause the price to soar. On Sunday night, the on-chain HIMS briefly reached $132.64, while the underlying stock closed at $28.84 on Friday, a premium of over four times. No one could explain which small trade caused that big green candlestick.
The USD price of BONER = (BONER to HIMS ratio) × (on-chain HIMS USD price). When the quoted asset is squeezed out, the USD price of BONER surges: with a 24-hour increase of approximately 1000%, reaching a market capitalization in the range of $35-41 million, with trades ranging from millions to tens of millions of dollars.
So, a more accurate description would be: On-chain HIMS in free float is drained by the pool + no new coins can be minted over the weekend = on-chain shadow squeezed out, causing a premium over the weekend → the USD market value of the meme pair is amplified by this premium.
At Monday's opening, the issuer quickly minted about 4000 new HIMS coins to hit the premium. The on-chain HIMS returned to around $29 within a few hours, reconnecting with the underlying stock. The premium leg died quickly.
In theory, if the ratio remains the same, the USD price of BONER should drop significantly. However, it is still rising. The Defiant's mid-Monday data showed this structure: when the HIMS token returned to near the underlying stock, BONER was still trading at around $0.04, with a 24-hour surge of over a thousand percent and a market cap in the tens of millions.
But BONER is still rising, driven by emotion.
It is essential to draw a clear line here between "squeezing the HIMS underlying stock" and the overall situation. With only a little over 50,000 tokens on-chain and approximately 192 million shares of the underlying stock in circulation, it is clear that the small cap token locked up is not part of the NYSE float. With 62 million shares in short positions, they will not automatically close due to a meme pool. On the Ondo side, a similar HIMS packaged token is on a scale one order of magnitude larger, shadowing the underlying stock throughout, without this weekend decoupling.
It represents an on-chain run on an ultra-thin tokenized stock when unable to issue new shares over the weekend, drained of floating supply by the meme pool, stacked with the "ED Company + BONER + short position" narrative. The advertisement speaks to the NYSE, but the engine is running on the very small token pool on Robinhood's chain.
What Data Should We Look at When Trading Stock Market Memes
Stock market memes can be divided into two layers, focusing on different elements.
For the stock memes in the app, focus on five key metrics every day: mentions, short interest/lending, trading volume multiples, any new issuances, and near-month options.
For the on-chain coin-stock pairs, look at another five key metrics daily: premium, total token supply change, main pool lockup, meme/stock ratio, and main pool buy/sell ratio.
Premium = On-chain stock token / Underlying Stock − 1. A high premium means you are gambling on a thin weekend market; a premium close to 0 means you can only bet on the meme's own ratio.
Wrapping: Total supply of stock tokens, how much is locked in the main pool, and how much is left in the price discovery pool. Only when the total supply is only tens of thousands and more than half is locked in the main pool do you have the kind of squeeze like BONER; with a large supply and locked holdings scattered, replication is impossible.
Minting: Whether the total supply has increased today, and whether there has been a large mint after opening. If someone is minting, the second leg (shadow premium) is highly likely to be dismantled. At this point, pricing based on the weekend high will treat the bubble as chips.
Ratio: 1 meme = how many stock tokens. Only this is recognized after opening. An increase in the ratio = emotional leg; a decrease in the ratio, and sideways dollar price = mostly the shadow supporting the balance sheet.
Pool Health: Main pool depth, trading volume, whether large sell orders will dump the stock tokens back into circulation. When selling pressure comes, the meme and shadow tremble together.
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