SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk (R) gestures as he arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Awards Ceremony in Berlin on December 1, 2020.
Britta Pedersen | AFP | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other celebrities have recently posted several tweets in support of dogecoin – and some people in the world of cryptocurrencies are not impressed.
Nic Carter, a venture capitalist known for his rising stance on bitcoin, says Musk’s enthusiasm for the meme-inspired digital symbol is “baffling” because it is used primarily as a “vehicle for speculation.”
“Unfortunately, a lot of retail customers will lose money on dogecoin in the long run because there really isn’t much out there in terms of exciting technology,” Castle Island Ventures co-founder and data firm told CNBC Coin Metrics. Street Signs Europe “Wednesday.
“The only thing he can really do is be zombied and stay around and be an empty shell for people’s expectations and entertainment.”
Carter said that the dogecoin introduced him to cryptography in 2013 and that, although it was “fun and entertaining” at the time, it is now “a kind of bare shell.”
Dogecoin was briefly the virtual currency no. 10 depending on the market value this week, according to CoinMarketCap, as tweets from Musk and music industry icons Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons have raised their price to a historic level.
Created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, the dogecoin was intended to be used as a faster – but “fun” alternative to bitcoin. It is based on the popular meme “doge”, which depicts a shiba inu dog with multicolored text in font without comic characters.
After taking a short two-day break from Twitter, Musk returned to tweet more about dogecoin, calling it a “people’s crypt.”
Carter was not the only bitcoin enthusiast to criticize Musk for his comments about dogecoin. Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, said he wanted Musk not to make such tweets.
“Dogecoin reminds me a lot of GameStop,” Novogratz told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, referring to the brick-and-mortar video game retailer that saw its shares fluctuate wildly after members of a Reddit board s -they piled up in very short-circuited stock. .
“It’s a meme,” he said. “It was funny for a while, but now it’s at a market valuation where people will lose a lot of money in the doge.”
“Bitcoin has a real purpose, Etheruem has a real purpose, a lot of stablecoins have a real purpose,” Novogratz added. “Doge is a kind of meme, a kind of joke.”
The former hedge fund manager compared Musk’s comments about dogecoin to his infamous “secured funding” tweet in 2018, where he claimed that he was considering privatizing Tesla for $ 420. Musk agreed to pay a fine and resigned as chairman of Tesla to settle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in this regard.
Tesla on Monday unveiled a $ 1.5 billion investment in bitcoin, in news that raised the price of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency to a record high and led to speculation about whether more large companies would do the same. .
Carter said that although he considered the company’s acquisition of bitcoin “interesting”, he did not recommend the companies in which he invested to follow suit.
“I don’t put the assets of my startups in bitcoin, and I honestly don’t necessarily think it’s the most prudent approach for a CFO,” he said.