bookmark_borderYay or nay? New petition demands Elon Musk sell all his Bitcoin

The “Dogefather” has gone too far for some Bitcoin hodlers and should allow a “better custodian” to own them instead, said the petition’s creator.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO and self-proclaimed “Dogefather” Elon Musk should sell his Bitcoin holdings, said hodlers.

A new petition on Change.org is currently gathering signatures to make Musk divest himself of his personal stash of Bitcoin (BTC).

“Elon Musk: Sell your Bitcoin”

Its goal is modest:100 signatures at first, of which a grand total of 62 have already been gathered. For the creator of the petition, however, billionaire Musk has touched a nerve.

“Elon Musk has accumulated at least $1.5bn of bitcoin on the Tesla balance sheet, and very likely has a larger personal holding he has not revealed,” its description begins.

“Meanwhile, Musk has doubled down on endorsing dogecoin, a literal joke, claiming to be working with the nonexistent development team and mooting integrating the cryptocurrency into SpaceX.”

Musk is currently at the center of furor over his professed love of meme-based altcoin Dogecoin (DOGE), which he has championed while criticizing Bitcoin.

The impact on both cryptocurrencies ended up being negative this weekend as BTC/USD fell to near $42,000 and saw its market dominance drop to three-year lows.

BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: Tradingview

Reactions pinned the blame firmly on “Technoking” Musk, while some seasoned analysts argued that his actions would end up being inconsequential in the face of the overall bullish Bitcoin price trajectory.

Until he sells his BTC, however, there will be an opportunity for Musk to influence market sentiment unfairly to the detriment of every other hodler,  the petition claims.

“He should sell his bitcoin, and hope it all ends up with a better custodian,” it continues.

“If poetic justice prevails, that might just end up being somebody he was on the cusp of ruining over doge. Elon Musk: sell your bitcoin.”

Odds are on for $100,000

As Cointelegraph reported, another gauge of investors’ feelings on the future of Bitcoin in light of recent events is more hopeful. A survey by Stock-to-Flow price model creator PlanB shows that most see BTC/USD hitting $100,000 in 2021.

At the time of writing, over 70,000 responses have confirmed that $100,000 is a reasonable price target, with only 25% believing that the largest cryptocurrency will peak lower. 

PlanB’s Bitcoin price survey. Source: PlanB/Twitter

PlanB himself came out fighting against Musk, calling his actions an attempt to “destroy” Bitcoin.

“If you want to make a statement, selling your Tesla stock and buying Bitcoin instead could be very effective IMO,” he told Twitter followers.

bookmark_borderUK Bitcoin wallet provider Caricoin to create NFT platform for reggae artists

Reggae and dancehall musicians in the Caribbean may soon have a nonfungible token platform to help gain greater control of their creative work.

Jamaican reggae artist Bay-C has partnered with Caricoin, a London-based Bitcoin (BTC) wallet company, to create a nonfungible token (NFT) platform for fellow performers in the Caribbean.

According to a report by the Jamaica Observer, the planned NFT platform will allow reggae and dancehall creatives in the Caribbean to gain more from their efforts in the music industry.

The planned NFT platform for musicians in the Caribbean is a further extension of the three-year partnership between Caricoin and the reggae star. Commenting on the plans for the NFT platform, Bay-C stated:

“Not everybody wants to understand how the blockchain technology works, some just want to get the content out; know that they have this NFT, so we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for as many people in the Jamaican and Caribbean creative space.”

According to Bay-C, the planned NFT platform for Caribbean reggae stars will come online before the end of 2021. The reggae star said he is encouraging his colleagues to get involved with NFTs.

The upcoming reggae NFT platform is another example of Caricoin’s continued expansion in the Caribbean. The U.K. Bitcoin wallet company made Jamaica its home back in 2015 and announced plans for a crypto exchange back in 2016.

Bay-C has some previous experience with NFTs, releasing seven copies of one of his songs as digital tokens. The reggae star reportedly plans to expand his NFT foray by releasing digital collectibles as part of his second full album, King Bass.

Owners of the King Bass NFT collection will reportedly gain access to redeemable and unlockable content as well as coupons and playing cards.

Musicians and other celebrities continue to delve into NFTs, releasing digital collections leveraging on their personal or creative brand identities.

bookmark_borderAll hail the Shiba? Rise of Dogecoin pretenders fueled by meme frenzy

Shiba Inu joins in at the top of the dog meme coin phenomenon as Musk announces developer support for Dogecoin.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) has been the talk of the cryptoverse and mainstream media recently. It is a meme coin themed around the Shibu Inu dog, a Japanese dog breed that Dogecoin (DOGE) is also basing its image on. According to data from CoinMarketCap, SHIB hit its all-time high of $0.0000388 on May 10 after it surged more than 2,500% from trading at $0.00001478 on May 7.

The token has now been listed on most of the major exchanges, such as Binance, Coinbase, FTX, OKEx and even Binance’s Indian counterpart, WazirX. It had also briefly broken into the top 20 cryptocurrencies list by market capitalization. Currently, it has dropped off in the rankings, with a market cap of just over $6 billion. Earlier on May 10, SHIB’s market capitalization hit an all-time high of over $13.5 billion.

SHIB was launched in August 2020, soon after Dogecoin’s hype on TikTok sent the coin to a two-year high. According to its “Woof Paper,” a total of 1 quadrillion tokens were minted, 50% of which was locked into Uniswap with the keys thrown away. The other half, however, was sent to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s wallet in an uninvited fashion.

The intention behind sending 50% of the tokens to Buterin was to ensure price stability since ideally, the demand-supply dynamic wouldn’t allow the price to swing rapidly since one entity owns a large portion of the circulating supply.

However, Buterin gave away over $1 billion worth of SHIB to a coronavirus charity in India known as the India Covid Relief Fund. This led to the price of the coin crashing by over 50% almost immediately as the market began to panic.

Disclaimer: The coins described below are highly volatile and speculative in nature. This article is not an endorsement of these coins. If you opt to trade any of these coins, do so at your own risk.

Dogecoin killers out there? Maybe not just yet

According to the coin’s woofpaper, it claims to be the “Dogecoin Killer,” citing the enormous supply of the token as a differentiating factor between the two. In fact, on May 10, the demand for Shiba Inu grew so much that Binance ran out of ETH addresses since the token is based on the Ethereum blockchain.

Johnny Lyu, CEO of KuCoin — a crypto exchange — spoke with Cointelegraph about the positives of such high demand from retail investors: “It can be considered as a way to quickly learn about blockchain and the cryptocurrency industry. It provides new users with a lower threshold compared to some mainstream cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.”

As the token is competing with DOGE, it’s important to assess how it’s performing relative to Dogecoin. At the time of writing, SHIB is trading in the $0.000016 range, amounting to around 10,000% of gains in the last 30 days in comparison to around 300% gains in the same 30 days for Dogecoin, which is currently changing hands at roughly $0.50. Speaking of Dogecoin’s use cases, Lyu further elaborated:

“Dogecoin has a unique cultural symbol along with abundant application cases. For example, SpaceX announced recently that it will launch the DOGE-1 moon mission, and the cost will be paid by Dogecoin. This will allow more people to learn about and use Dogecoin along with Musk’s preference for Dogecoin.”

DOGE crashed by more than 25% following Tesla CEO’s Saturday Night Live appearance where he dropped several references to the meme token. His appearance also led to the price of Tesla dropping 14%, thus losing nearly $20 billion in market value.

However, on May 14, Musk made an announcement that he would be working with the DOGE development team to “improve system transaction efficiency.” This news led to the rebound of the token’s price from $0.38 to trading in the $0.50 range as the community envisions further adoption by brands and firms as payment options available to retail investors.

Jake Wujastyk, chief market analyst at TrendSpider — a technical analysis software company — told Cointelegraph that the DOGE price drop before SNL was not a coincidence: “This flush in price to the mid-$0.30s was conveniently timed right before this announcement by Elon Musk.” He further added:

“Dogecoin moved down to the volume shelf around $0.35 earlier in the week (an area where people who originally had profits in the $0.40s+, were back to break even). This is exactly where technical traders should have expected a bounce as supply dried up in this area (due to a lack of profits held by those that held DOGE around $0.35 originally).”

While SHIB is currently the most talked-about dog-themed meme coin apart from DOGE, there are several other highly volatile and speculative dog meme tokens that are floating around in the cryptoverse, which were launched in the hope to replicate the performance of DOGE.

One of the other coins from the same development team as SHIB is called LEASH. This coin has a limited total supply of just 107,647 tokens. Due to this low supply and the hype around the project, the sister token of Shiba Inu has seen astronomical gains of 6,500,000% since the beginning of May.

Another such coin is Kishu Inu (KISHU), a token themed around Shiba Inu’s distant relative, the Kishu. The project’s white paper speaks of a farming decentralized application in the future similar to SHIB’s upcoming ShibaSwap marketplace where users can swap the token and even earn rewards through staking. The coin is currently changing hands at $0.00000001, posting over 4,000% gains in the last 14 days.

Another coin that is trying to capture the DOGE hype is Dogelon Mars (ELON), a coin based on Elon Musk and his love for space travel. Similar to SHIB’s tokenomics, upon minting, 50% of the supply was sent to Buterin’s wallet address, and the other 50% was locked on Uniswap in a liquidity pool with an Ether (ETH) pairing. ELON is currently trading at $0.00000070 and has posted over 220% gains in the last 14 days.

It doesn’t end there. There are many more projects that are trying to imitate the financial performance of Dogecoin — UnderDog (DOG), Doge Token (DOGET), DogeFi (DOGEFI), DogeSwap (DOGES), PAW Token and ShibaCorgi Token, to name a few. In fact, there is now even a CAT token, which was launched by Netflix show Tiger King star Carole Baskin.

Related: DOGE as internet money? TikTokers and sports fans see a use case for Dogecoin

Wujastyk further elaborated on the feasibility of these dog-themed meme tokens: “There are many coins popping up and simply riding the Dogecoin coattails. Most of these coins have no utility at all other than being a vehicle of speculation.” He further added: “These are mostly just coins riding the coattails of the current coin mania. Generally, this does not end well and many new traders will likely get burned.”

Since most of these dog-themed meme coins apart from DOGE are Ethereum-based ERC-20 standard tokens, the hype around them led to additional congestion on the Ethereum network and thus drove up the gas fees. Consequently, the price of dabbling into these coins has now increased substantially.

The blockchain is currently in the process of transitioning to Ethereum 2.0, which will see a proof-of-work consensus model replaced by a proof-of-stake consensus that aims to improve the scalability of the network and thus reduce gas fees for investors. But this process will take some time to conclude.

In the meantime, the general love for dogs and the desire to become quick millionaires like several DOGE investors are leading to meme coins flooding the market. But whether it is just a bubble or if there will be a paradigm shift in crypto due to these tokens remain to be seen. Most likely, Doge will pave the way for these coins and decide their future based on its own adoption and price action.

bookmark_borderIranian crypto miners using household energy to face large fines

Iran is fighting against unauthorized crypto mining amid ongoing energy supply shortages.

The Iranian government continues to closely monitor the cryptocurrency mining industry by initiating new measures against home crypto miners, according to a new report.

Mostafa Rajabi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Energy of Iran, said that crypto mining with household electricity is not legal and thus, home miners will have to pay heavy fines if discovered, local news agency The Tehran Times reported Sunday.

Crypto miners using household energy will be also required to provide compensation for potential damages caused to the electricity network, the official stated. 

Rajabi said that the government has undertaken these measures in order to get a handle on Iran’s power shortage — the result of foreign sanctions on hydrocarbons and decreased hydroelectric production due to less-than-average rainfall.  

Rajabi stated that unauthorized crypto mining can damage the local power grid and lead to blackouts. He said last week that as much as 87% of crypto mining operations in Iran are illegal.

The energy crisis in Iran has led the government to strictly control the energy-intensive industry. Back in 2018, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme Cyberspace Council said that various ministries of the country’s government had accepted mining as an industry. Eventually, the Iranian government approved crypto mining as an industrial activity in 2019, subjecting it to a licensing scheme and regulated electricity price regime.

In April, the central bank authorized banks and licensed forex shops to use crypto as payments for imports to mitigate the impact of sanctions imposed by the United States.

bookmark_borderBitcoin price metric flashes rare ‘buy the dip’ opportunity at $42K lows

NVT is a “buy the dip” opportunity that few ever get access to this week, one analyst says, as BTC/USD stays in the mid-$40,000 range.

Bitcoin (BTC) is facing a make-or-break moment this week as a classic indicator signals a price watershed. 

According to the network value to transaction (NVT) price, BTC/USD is in line for a reset at recent lows of just above $42,000.

NVT calls a significant BTC move

After dipping on negative sentiment as a result of tweets from Elon Musk, Bitcoin is attempting to establish definitive support near its old all-time highs from February.

At the same time, NVT, which is used to discover potential local price polarities, suggests that the market is looking at an event similar to early 2018 or last March’s cross-asset crash.

The start of 2018 heralded a year-long bear market, while last year, Bitcoin conversely bounced from lows to new all-time highs — a bull run that analysts argue is still in action.

With the $42,000 dip bringing Bitcoin below NVT price, however, statistician Willy Woo drew attention to similar events throughout its 12-year history.

“Here is some hopium for those of you losing your minds,” Filbfilb, co-founder of trading suite DecenTrader, added about the indicator.

BTC/USD vs. NVT price chart. Source: Willy Woo/Twitter

A “buy the dip” like few others?

As Cointelegraph reported, NVT and its derivatives correctly called the explosive growth of Q1 2021.

NVT is far from the only tool in bulls’ arsenal for calling a continuation, however, and fresh data is also highlighting a distinct difference between old and new BTC hodlers.

The price dip, for instance, came as recent buyers sold in panic, overwhelmingly at a loss. Older entities, by contrast, happily bought up the available liquidity.

“Translation: BTFD opportunities like this don’t come often,” analyst William Clemente flatly commented on the NVT data.