Fanbase is irrelevant. Cash can keep things afloat and with Nick Fuentes, we saw it kind of was coming from nowhere and was basically a self-funded smoke and mirrors from that dead frenchman (not saying Josh has bots but secret cash can come from anywhere).
Since you've brought up Fuentes' secret crypto assets (like when Fed Fuentes obtained a quarter of a million dollars in Bitcoin from an anon from France not long before Jan 6th), to add more to the 'Fuentes is a Fed' theory there was the time when Nick Fuentes hosted an America First-centric event while Nick Fuentes was under federal investigation for Jan 6th.
AFPAC 2 was an event that centered around Nick Fuentes and his America First policies but what Nick Fuentes failed to disclose at the time was that the feds seized most of his assets, put him on a no-fly list, and he was put on a watchlist when the glowies were investigating everyone involved in Jan 6th at the time. Although very strangely enough, Nick Fuentes would only have his assets seized and be put on a no-fly list for a few months and then he was strangely cleared which gave him the ability to fly again and Fuentes would strangely get his assets back from the FBI while other groypers that participated in Jan 6th got the book thrown at them despite Nick Fuentes being one of the main prevaricators of Jan 6th at the time (it's almost like Nick Fuentes most likely glows and everything about him screams honeypot).
To give you an idea of why AFPAC 2 was a terrible idea in the first place, in order to attend this event you had to give Nick Fuentes your first and last name along with some proof of identification to attend AFPAC 2. What made this a very bad idea is that it was most likely the glowies were collecting this information from the Groypers with Nick Fuentes knowing fully well he was under FBI investigation and Fuentes failed to disclose this publicly to his groypers on why attenting AFPAC 2 could ruin their lives since the glowies at the time wanted blood (like sharks being in a frenzy when they smell a bleeding animal in the water).
How do we know any of this is true? Because Patrick Casey (a former leader of Identity Evropa and a former friend of Nick Fuentes) would disclose this publicly in a mini stream where he confessed that Nick Fuentes told him personally he was being investigated by the FBI and he warned his fellow viewers to not attend AFPAC 2 unless you want to be put on a watchlist and have your life ruined by the feds too.
When I say that Fuentes glows, this is what I mean. If anything, steamers like Asmongold are very naive if they think humoring Fuentes is a good idea. Any zoomers that think Fuentes is genuine are either too lazy to research the real Nick Fuentes, they are too stupid to see Fuentes for what he really is, or they're in denial of Fuentes' sketchy past in regards to why following Nick Fuentes blindly is a very bad idea. If it looks like a fed asset and if it talks like a fed asset then most likely what you're dealing with is a fed asset.