Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been criticized for wielding what many understand to be irresponsible affect over the cryptocurrency market. Musk frequentl
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been criticized for wielding what many understand to be irresponsible affect over the cryptocurrency market. Musk frequently took to Twitter to put up memes and scorching takes on varied cryptocurrencies all through most of 2021, not least Bitcoin (BTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE).
Musk quickly added one other coin to that record — CumRocket (CUMMIES). CumRocket is described as a “revolutionary deflationary token” aimed in direction of use by these within the grownup movie business.
On June four Musk posted a cryptic tweet with three phrases listed: Canada, USA, Mexico. Observers interpreted this as Musk cheekily writing the phrase “CUM”, and inside hours the value of just a little identified token referred to as CumRocket greater than doubled.
Quick ahead 24 hours and Musk was at it once more. This time he posted a sequence of emojis which might fairly be interpreted as “CumRocket to the moon”.
–>
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2021
Inside simply ten minutes, the value of CumRocket jumped from $0.06 to $0.28 — a 366% improve. Predictably, the speculative pump didn’t final for lengthy, and by the point of publication, the CUMMIES token worth had fallen again to round $0.07.
One of many first Bitcoin change operators, and co-founder of Zap Protocol, Nick Spanos, informed Cointelegraph he believes a lot of Musk’s market-moving exercise is designed to applicable extra belongings at a less expensive worth than he in any other case would have.
“Musk harmed numerous folks much less lucky than he in his egocentric shilling and strikes to get cheaper coin,” mentioned Spanos.
The prime instance of this, if true, would maybe be Musk’s announcement that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion price of Bitcoin, and that the automobile firm would settle for BTC for fee. Lower than a couple of weeks later, Musk enacted a swift reversal of sentiment on Bitcoin, which he derided for its environmental influence, and summarily eliminated it as a fee possibility on the Tesla web site.
Even when Musk simply bought bored of Bitcoin, his tweets to over 50 million followers quantity to recklessness, and an abuse of belief, says Spanos.
“Folks consider in Bitcoin as a result of it’s a path to financial independence from central banks, and he’s attacking their belief with reckless tweets and abuse of affect. As an alternative of being a job mannequin, he’s revealing much less favorable primal traits.”
Musk has beforehand mentioned he would welcome any investigation by the Securities and Alternate Fee into the impact his tweets have had on the crypto market. Spanos mentioned Musk’s vanity and greed should be paid for, whether or not to the SEC, or nameless hacker teams comparable to Nameless. (Nameless has since denied accountability for the video addressed to Elon Musk).
“Conceitedness and greed can’t defend him from penalties. If the SEC isn’t going to sanction him for manipulating markets like they did earlier than, maybe the activists will,” mentioned Spanos.
“It’s not arduous to think about a situation the place individuals who belief their lives together with his expertise, might see incidents the place that belief perhaps even catastrophically ends,” he added.
As reported by the BBC, one girl misplaced £9,000 ($12,700) in a Bitcoin rip-off which was falsely offered as an official giveaway by Elon Musk. Such pretend giveaways are nothing new within the cryptocurrency area, however would this one have occurred if Elon Musk wasn’t already putting himself on the entrance and middle of the cryptosphere?
Regardless of the reply, Spanos believes Musk’s time can be higher spent really utilizing and implementing blockchain applied sciences, and inventing methods for folks to succeed in his personal stage of financial freedom.
“If I have been Elon, I’d be double checking my penetration checks, and spending extra time implementing blockchain options — and discovering methods to assist the folks rise to their highest stage of freedom,” mentioned Spanos.