Paying in meme - Elon Musk offers money to help Dogecoin become ‘currency of the internet’ and Dogecoin price rockets after.

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Elon Musk has said he will buy out major Dogecoin holders in order to help make the fringe cryptocurrency the “currency of the internet”.

 

Quotes

Quote

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO, who overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person last month, posted several tweets criticising the so-called crypto whales who hoard large stockpiles of Dogecoin.

These large holders are the only thing standing in the way of Dogecoin from becoming a mainstream currency, according to Mr Musk, who has previously suggested that the “people’s crypto” could become the official currency on Mars.

“If major Dogecoin holders sell most of their coins, it will get my full support. Too much concentration is the only real issue imo,” he tweeted.

“I will literally pay actual $ if they just void their accounts.”

Analysis of digital wallets reveals that one holder owns more than a quarter of all 128 billion Dogecoin (DOGE) tokens in circulation.

The balance of just over 36 billion Dogecoins is worth over $2 billion at today’s prices.

Responding to Mr Musk’s tweets, one Dogecoin advocate wrote: “Whales will have to consider Elon’s ultimatum here. If they comply, Dogecoin becomes the currency of the internet.

“If they don’t, or ‘cheat’ by distributing their coins across multiple wallets, then it loses Elon’s endorsement. Easy decision for the whales. Do the right thing.”

Mr Musk responded to this tweet by writing “Yup... Temporarily lower, long-term raise.”

The price of cryptocurrency dogecoin has rocketed it up in the wake of a series of tweets from Elon Musk.

Dogecoin began as something of a joke in 2013 but has since become a meaningful cryptocurrency in its own right. Its price has risen 1,250 per cent since the beginning of the year and it now has a market capitalisation of almost $10 billion.

 

My thoughts

Imagine paying in a meme, well that's (hopefully) what'll happen soon. This will be rather interesting to watch and I'm gonna be honest, if this happens, I will start mining dogecoin (probably and if you can mine it). Point being that this year might be the beginning of the heyday of cryptocurrencies, we've already seen BTC go up after a long time in the valley and now DOGE, This is gonna be amazing and terrifying because if this continues we might have to deal with a longer shortage of chips, but eh it will sort itself out eventually.

Sources

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-dogecoin-currency-internet-b1802319.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/dogecoin-price-today-elon-musk-value-b1799069.html

[LAwLz]

I mined some dogecoin back in 2014 just to see how cryptocurreny worked (back when I thought ~200 dollars for a bitcoin was too expensive).

Little did I know that my experiment would be worth dozens of dollars a mere 5 years later!

[podkall]

If this is not troll, than it's going to be funny lol.

And hopefully as profitable as Bitcoin, also hopefuly more forgiving than Bitcoin..

Just now, LAwLz said:

Little did I know that my experiment would be worth dozens of dollars a mere 5 years later!

dam

[SADS]

The fact that these digital currencies appear SO volatile just makes me trust them even less.

All it seems to take is one man and a news article to rocket the price.

[leadeater]

28 minutes ago, SADS said:

The fact that these digital currencies appear SO volatile just makes me trust them even less.

All it seems to take is one man and a news article to rocket the price.

Don't worry, the next coin will solve that issue. If that doesn't then the next one will, promise.

[Sauron]

I wish idiots like Musk could be held accountable for the people they influence into throwing away their money.

[SADS]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I wish idiots like Musk could be held accountable for the people they influence into throwing away their money.

To be fair, I'm more concerned about the environmental impact.

All these farms, burning through electricity, creating shortages on products for people. Cryptocurrency just needs to go away.

[ARikozuM]

4 minutes ago, SADS said:

To be fair, I'm more concerned about the environmental impact.

All these farms, burning through electricity, creating shortages on products for people. Cryptocurrency just needs to go away.

The majority of emissions are only by a dozen or so companies. You using or not using your electricity is barely a blip on the savings. 

[Sauron]

5 minutes ago, SADS said:

To be fair, I'm more concerned about the environmental impact.

All these farms, burning through electricity, creating shortages on products for people. Cryptocurrency just needs to go away.

It's kind of two sides of the same dogecoin, power cosumption wouldn't be much of a problem without the wild speculation.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

The majority of emissions are only by a dozen or so companies. You using or not using your electricity is barely a blip on the savings. 

That's not really true, while 70% of the emissions by companies are put out by only about 100 of them the overall stats are different. While of course one person's normal power draw is a drop in the bucket, crypto mining farms combined use enough power that they have caused power outages in places like Iran. Still not the largest contributor to emissions of course but significant nonetheless.

[Drama Lama]

17 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I wish idiots like Musk could be held accountable for the people they influence into throwing away their money.

maybe not that but for tweeting and probably knowing it will change the course of stonks and crypto coins

[Spindel]

Stve Jobs was surrounded by a reality distortion field...

 

...Elon Musk has an even bigger reality distortion field.

 

 

Steve Jobs at least he had actual (good) ideas surrounding his products and an design philosophy.

 

I wish Mr Musk would just go away.

[bcredeur97]

2 hours ago, SADS said:

The fact that these digital currencies appear SO volatile just makes me trust them even less.

All it seems to take is one man and a news article to rocket the price.

It’s because they are so tiny relative to a lot of other things. 

[LAwLz]

30 minutes ago, Sauron said:

That's not really true, while 70% of the emissions by companies are put out by only about 100 of them the overall stats are different. While of course one person's normal power draw is a drop in the bucket, crypto mining farms combined use enough power that they have caused power outages in places like Iran. Still not the largest contributor to emissions of course but significant nonetheless.

To be fair, Iran might not have the greatest infrastructure to their citizen homes, and it only causes issues at certain times each day.

According to Wikipedia, in 2013 Iran was capable of producing 224 terawatt hours from their thermal power plants. According to this tool from Cambridge, the estimated total power consumption from all bitcoin mining is 119TWh. So power consumption is very high. The global bitcoin network could suck up about half of the energy generated in Iran back in 2013. But Iran doesn't use that much power.

 

For comparison, the US used 4222 TWh of power in 2018.

China used 7225 TWh of power in 2019.

 

 

So all bitcoin mining in the entire world is estimated to be about 2.8% of the energy the US uses alone.

All bitcoin mining in the entire world uses 1.6% of the power used in China.

 

China and the US alone uses 96 times more power than the global bitcoin mining network does.

[Loote]

11 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

China and the US alone uses 96 times more power than the global bitcoin mining network does.

I take more issue with how useless that is, and apart from mining you get equipment that I think much of won't find another home after it becomes unprofitable, though I have to wonder what the footprint is compared to physical money which is still a thing.

[Doobeedoo]

Cryptocurrency that fluctuates because of memes huh ok then.

[Sir Asvald]

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

I wish idiots like Musk could be held accountable for the people they influence into throwing away their money.

Why would the be held accountable or anyone? It's not their problem that people don't have the control to manage their own finances.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, Sir Asvald said:

Why would the be held accountable or anyone? It's not their problem that people don't have the control to manage their own finances.

You could use that same excuse to justify fraud. Sure, you ran the Ponzi scheme but it's not your fault if people fell for it...

[Sir Asvald]

11 minutes ago, Sauron said:

You could use that same excuse to justify fraud. Sure, you ran the Ponzi scheme but it's not your fault if people fell for it...

Again, it is your responsibility to check whether a company or a person is legit you research about them. People will always be tricked with jargon and words they do not understand.. 

[Drama Lama]

it's like a train ( all the crypto hype ) that is constantly picking up speed and everyone sitting inside should know it can't accelerate forever and will , at some point chrash. Everyone is hoping they are not sitting in it when that happens

[Sauron]

6 minutes ago, Sir Asvald said:

Again, it is your responsibility to check whether a company or a person is legit you research about them. People will always be tricked with jargon and words they do not understand.. 

The law disagrees with you (at least regarding fraud) and so do I. You don't blame the victim when someone went out of their way to trick them.

 

What Musk does may not technically qualify as a scam or market manipulation but in my opinion it should.

[Zodiark1593]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

I wish idiots like Musk could be held accountable for the people they influence into throwing away their money.

Short of a lifetime internet ban (which is quite unenforceable) or jail time (of which there’s unlikely anything to justify more than a couple years), have any ideas? The SEC could pressure Twitter into banning him, however, Elon could just as easily build a new platform.  Fines similarly are unlikely to be impactful to someone with Elon’s resources.

 

He may be a wack job, but he (perhaps unfortunately) isn’t stupid. 

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Short of a lifetime internet ban (which is quite unenforceable) or jail time (of which there’s unlikely anything to justify more than a couple years), have any ideas?

Well... in a world with the political will to hold him accountable you could relatively easily keep track of who was screwed over by this sort of statement and get Musk to refund the losses. I would also accept a couple of years in jail though, it would definitely get people like him to think long and hard before posting this sort of thing - jail is no joke.

[Zodiark1593]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Well... in a world with the political will to hold him accountable you could relatively easily keep track of who was screwed over by this sort of statement and get Musk to refund the losses. I would also accept a couple of years in jail though, it would definitely get people like him to think long and hard before posting this sort of thing - jail is no joke.

Prison is unlikely to break Elon for similar reasons that he’s not already there. The guy is defiant in nature, and seeks to toe the line as closely as possible without getting seriously burned. The harder the system clamps down, the more he pushes back. Getting him to fall in line is not an easy challenge. 

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Prison is unlikely to break Elon for similar reasons that he’s not already there. The guy is defiant in nature, and seeks to toe the line as closely as possible without getting seriously burned. The harder the system clamps down, the more he pushes back. Getting him to fall in line is not an easy challenge. 

With the way things are right now he can't get burned. If you have enough money the rules don't apply to you unless you do something insane like killing someone on live television (and even then there may be exceptions...). How has the system "clamped down" on him in any significant way so far? I'm certain that a credible threat of jail time would get him to shut up instantly.

 

A bigger issue would be distinguishing between people like Musk who clearly have enough outreach and influence to do damage with things like this and someone just memeing online... while the extremes are easy to spot the line is hard to draw. I think in this case one might be able to "get him" on technically having insider information on spacex' plans for their future Mars missions...