Fruit Fly Brain Tackles Crypto Trading: Can It Outperform Humans?

A Coinbase software engineer has connected a simulated fruit fly brain to a cryptocurrency trading platform. The project, called Stonkfly, uses a model of a male fly's brain and ventral nerve cord with no physical body.

Engineer Alex Wormuth gave the simulated insect $100 to trade Bitcoin and observed how its neural activity influenced buy and sell decisions. The project relies on engineered reinforcement signals rather than modeled pain receptors or synaptic changes that simulate learning.

The underlying network consists of 166,700 nodes, 25,582,938 directed connections, and 124,177,617 synaptic contacts. However, the project documentation warns against misinterpreting rising crypto prices as evidence of successful learning.