Smart Globies

The 3 most famous Israeli virtual currency projects in 2017-2018 were accused of being scams, with a project that once invited Lionel Messi to cooperate with the media.

A lawsuit filed on May 25 by employees of an Israeli venture capital fund alleges that three of Israel's largest cryptocurrency ICOs in 2017 and 2018. Totally a scam.

Three ICOs launched by Sirin Labs, Stx Technologies Limited (Stox) and Leadcoin, have raised $250 million from investors around the world.

The plaintiffs allege that none of the three companies ever developed a product as they promised investors. Instead, the defendants blatantly appropriated investors' money for personal use.

An ICO is the first issuance of virtual currency, a form of fundraising used by blockchain startups. Investors will be presented with a short film about the startup, biographies of the founders, and a "white paper" explaining the technology and business plan in more detail. If impressed by the startup, they can purchase tokens in its initial virtual currency offering. These tokens typically allow access to the product, and if the product is successful, it is expected that the tokens will increase in value on secondary exchanges. The $16.1 million lawsuit was filed by Roee Brocial and Eran Okashi, two former employees of the Singulariteam venture capital fund. Okashi served as an accountant for companies, while Broncial served as a personal assistant to Singulariteam's largest shareholder, Moshe Hogeg.

In subsequent statements, Hogeg denied the allegation and said the lawsuit was an attempt by disgruntled employees to blackmail him. Hogeg is an entrepreneur who has emerged since the early 2010s, famous for attracting famous investors into his startup projects, including Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, movie star Leonardo Dicaprio and Kazakh financier Kenges Rakishev. Hogeg is also the owner of the Beitar Jerusalem football team.

Hogeg has been sued several times by investors of various ventures who allege that he cheated them. In most cases, Hogeg settled with the plaintiffs, by signing non-disclosure agreements. And Hogeg is a 70% shareholder of Singulariteam, while the other defendants own a smaller number of shares in the fund. According to the plaintiffs, the defendants founded a series of blockchain-based companies with virtually no real activity and the sole purpose of defrauding investors. The complaint focuses on three of Singulariteam's ventures: Sirin Labs, which raised $158 million in July 2017 for a line of secure smartphones called Finney, in a partnership with Fonxconn, Prices start at $999.

Stx Technologies Limited, raised $34 million in August 2017 for the "predictive marketplace" of current events and sports. Leadcoin, on the other hand, raised $50 million in March 2018 for a "decentralized lead-sharing network".

The Stox ICO has been confirmed by the famous American boxer Floyd Mayweather. On Instagram, Sirin Labs is promoted by soccer star Lionel Messi and supermodels like Irina Shayk and Sara Sampaio. I am very happy to join Sirin Labs with the mission to make this technology more popular and friendly in the eyes of the public," the Barca star once shared on his personal Facebook page.

"Immediately after they raised money and sometimes while they were doing so, defendants gutted the companies and let them exist without any substantial activity, leaving investors with great damage," the lawsuit alleges.

The complaint alleges that Singulariteam's owners were attracted by the fact that the cryptocurrency is unregulated.

The plaintiffs have filed audio recordings of Steven Kruger, Singulariteam's legal counsel, which reveal how Moshe Hogeg stole investors' money. However, Kruger passed away recently from complications following an operation.

According to the plaintiffs, the defendants used the money they raised to buy expensive properties. They also allege that the defendants took approximately $21 million in Stox funds to invest in Telegram's ICO.

The plaintiffs also claim that they personally invested in the aforementioned ICOs and encouraged friends and family to do the same. But promises of roses never appeared. Even about a month after Sirin's ICO, the value of one of the tokens increased. But the plaintiffs were barred from doing so, while some defendants sold their share.

The value of virtual currencies from the 3 projects above is extremely low, at the present time.

Just mining Dogecoin and having hot water to use, the idea is not too bad but does anyone need it.

When there are more and more signs that the Dogecoin bubble is about to burst, its crazy fan, billionaire Elon Musk decided to help. But not with a shout-out, but with an idea that seems so great to the CEO of Tesla when it will bring a practical application to this meme coin.

This great idea is to take advantage of the heat generated during Dogecoin mining to make a hot tub and more importantly, Mr. Musk himself is very excited about it. The idea comes at a time of growing concern about the environmental impacts of energy use when mining cryptocurrencies. It was Musk who evoked this concern by saying that the negative environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining was the reason why Tesla stopped accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment for car purchases. Musk's statement set off a series of measures to tighten crypto mining operations in China and Iran that followed. Most recently, Iran banned Bitcoin mining in this country for 4 months because of frequent power outages in this country.

The idea of the hot water tank was mentioned in the tweet of the crypto exchange Blockfolio: " Hot tub heated by mining Dogecoin. Elon Musk, I don't know how, but let's go it came true ." Beneath Mr. Musk responded with a terse response: " Great idea ."

It may sound odd, but this isn't the first time Musk has tried to find a real-life application for Dogecoin, the meme coin that was created as a joke. Earlier this month, Mr. Musk also announced a satellite launch program to be paid for in this Dogecoin.

" This mission will demonstrate the applicability of cryptocurrencies beyond Earth's orbit and form the basis for interplanetary commerce ." SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Business Tom Ochinero said in his statement. Even though the cryptocurrency market is seeing the biggest increase in recent years and is gaining popularity in every corner of the world. However, power concerns for cryptocurrency mining are becoming more and more ominous. But Mr. Musk has tried to defend this favorite cryptocurrency publicly, saying that its energy efficiency is much better than other cryptocurrencies.

On another occasion, Musk also revealed that he is working with Dogecoin developers to improve its energy efficiency.

This is not a joke," said expert Qu Qiang of a systemic shock that would hit the current financial system if Bitcoin was widely accepted as a currency.

Qu Qiang, a China economist and assistant director at the Institute of International Monetary Fund of Renmin University in Beijing, in a recent interview on CGTN (China Global Television Network) shared. Share your personal views on bitcoin. CGTN is owned by China Central Television (CCTV).

When asked about the worst-case scenario or whether there would be a systemic shock to the current financial system if the digital currency bitcoin becomes widely used in China or the rest of the world. world no, he replied that:

"I can tell you exactly what's going to happen… We're all going to die. This isn't a joke."

This expert calls this the "worst-case scenario or must-have" if Bitcoin becomes "the ultimate currency" and "accepted by the whole of human society".

“Bitcoin has a very, very limited total amount, which means it is a deflationary currency,” Qu shared, noting that Bitcoin will not expand as humans grow. increasing. Thus, he asserts that with the adoption of Bitcoin, human society will fall into a "death spiral of deflation". The whole society will shrink and explode on its own. That's what happened at the end of the Ming Dynasty when they ran short of silver," he further explained. Economist Qu Qiang in an interview on CGTN.

However, after the video of the expert's interview was shared on Twitter, it received mixed responses.

Many bitcoin investors have laughed and criticized this view, some even calling the whole thing the "ultimate FUD" or a "blatant propaganda" view. FUD stands for the first 3 letters of the phrases Fear - Uncertainty - Doubt (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), is considered a tactic of spreading fake news that affects perception by creating false information. .

Some people have argued against this view with evidence that: "The Ming dynasty collapsed for many reasons but the deflationary spiral due to lack of silver was not one of them". According to these views, at the time, the Ming issued too many banknotes and caused hyperinflation, but limits on silver were not the root cause. By 1425, paper money was worth only 1/70 of its original value, and its use was discontinued shortly thereafter.

Some joked , "I didn't know Bitcoin ended the Ming Dynasty", or quipped: "Imagine that bitcoin was created in the 15th century, it's scary."

Qu Qiang graduated and received a doctorate in economics from Renmin University of China, where he is currently a professor and PhD advisor. He is also the external supervisor of the Bank of Beijing and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Among the many positions he holds is the director of the China Center for Financial Policy Research, a key research center in the social sciences and humanities of the Chinese Ministry of Education.

The Dogecoin bubble seems to have burst.

According to BitInfoCharts data, Dogecoin's average transaction value plummeted nearly 80% from last Sunday's high of $1.16 million to less than $240,000 three days later.

Such a sharp drop in daily transaction value is a sign that the Dogecoin fever is gradually cooling down and a large amount of this digital currency is being held by "whales". Furthermore, BitInfoChart data shows that the total value of Dogecoin's on-chain transactions (made on the blockchain platform) peaked at $82 billion on May 5, which is higher than $35 billion of Bitcoin and $12 billion of Ethereum.

However, the current situation shows that the growth rate is slowing down.

On Wednesday, Dogecoin hit $5 billion in daily trading value, down 93% from its peak. Dogecoin surprised everyone by continuously witnessing double-digit growth, from 20% to 86% in just 24 hours on an April day. At that time, Dogecoin's market value was already large than some public companies like Ford and Kraft Heinz.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the price of Dogecoin is currently at $0.3055.

Who wins, who loses?

Dogecoin has been through a very wild journey. Starting at 0.5 cents, those who bought and held for a few months certainly made money. But there are probably a lot of people who bought at the highs when the price hit around 73 cents on May 8 and are now worried.

Dogecoin was created by engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in December 2013 to prove the worthlessness of cryptocurrencies. This satirical cryptocurrency uses a mock-up of the famous Japanese Shiba Inu dog as its symbol.

Initially, this meme went viral on the Internet in the early 2010s, creating a fever at both the US Comic Sans comic fair and appearing a lot in 9gag's photo manipulation culture.

The original photo was taken on February 23, 2010 by the dog's owner, a preschool teacher named Atsuko Sato. Ms. Sato started blogging 8 months ago to update daily information about her pet dog, named Kabosu.

The name is named after a large round Japanese lemon variety. The female dog Shiba Inu was adopted by her at a dog shelter that closed in 2008 surrounded by many Kabosu lemon trees.

Kabosu suddenly became famous globally when people saw this dog all over the mass media through the image of the virtual currency Dogecoin.

With the virtual currency world, Dogecoin is no longer a joke. This satirical cryptocurrency surged 800% in 24 hours on a late January day. At that time, billionaire Elon Musk happily helped the Reddit community fight Wall Street short sellers with a tweet, in return for this community together push Dogecoin 'to the moon'.

Dogecoin then continued to fly high, reaching a value of $0.45 in mid-April thanks to the support of Elon Musk, hit rapper Snoop Dogg, legendary bassist Gene Simmons before peaking at $0.73 at the beginning of the month. 5 with a record capitalization of $90 billion, ranking fourth in the entire crypto market at the time. The name is named after a large round Japanese lemon variety. The female dog Shiba Inu was adopted by her at a dog shelter that closed in 2008 surrounded by many Kabosu lemon trees.

When the photo became famous, Atsuko Sato was interviewed to ask about the moment. Unfortunately, she doesn't remember anything. “It took me a while, it looked very strange. It was the Kabosu that I didn't recognize," she told reporters in 2013.

“To be honest, a lot of the pictures look weird to me but still very funny. I am quite impressed with the taste and skill of this breed. None of my neighbors know anything about this meme. I don't really understand memes myself, maybe because I live a life like them," she confessed.

According to Ms. Sato, the reason Kabosu can create such a moment of life is because it is so different from other Shiba Inu dogs. It is very gentle and calm, it also loves to be photographed. The name is named after a large round Japanese lemon variety. The female dog Shiba Inu was adopted by her at a dog shelter that closed in 2008 surrounded by many Kabosu lemon trees.

When the photo became famous, Atsuko Sato was interviewed to ask about the moment. Unfortunately, she doesn't remember anything. “It took me a while, it looked very strange. It was the Kabosu that I didn't recognize," she told reporters in 2013.

“To be honest, a lot of the pictures look weird to me but still very funny. I am quite impressed with the taste and skill of this breed. None of my neighbors know anything about this meme. I don't really understand memes myself, maybe because I live a life like them," she confessed.

According to Ms. Sato, the reason Kabosu can create such a moment of life is because it is so different from other Shiba Inu dogs. It is very gentle and calm, it also loves to be photographed. On April 1, 2017, Chinese TV station broadcast the news that the dog Kabosu died as a joke on April Fools' Day. Fortunately, this dog is still healthy at the age of 16.

In addition to the Shiba Inu, Japan is also famous for the Akita Inu dog breed that goes down in history with the legendary story of the loyal Hachiko dog waiting for its owner to die. These breeds are all represented by some virtual currency with corresponding names during the pet-type cryptocurrency craze last month.

Instead of refuting the technological arguments in Vitalik Buterin's post, Elon Musk turned to a personal attack against the father of ETH.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published a lengthy document about the limits of blockchain scalability, criticizing Tesla CEO Elon Musk's statement.

Not a cryptocurrency with many special effects, but DogeCoin has a huge supporter behind each of its steps, which is Tesla CEO, Mr. Elon Musk. Most recently in a tweet on May 15, Musk also emphasized that, Dogecoin will rise to become the market leader if it can increase the block size by 900% compared to today: Ideally, Doge could increase block processing speed by 10x, block size by 10x, and reduce transaction fees by 100x. Then it would take off .”

But Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin disagrees with this optimistic statement. In a lengthy document just published, Buterin criticized Musk's statement for pointing out the limits of blockchain's scalability. In his May 23 post, Buterin said that in today's blockchain network architecture, there is always a trade-off between scalability and decentralization. Buterin emphasized the huge challenge if it were to spike scalability and throughput " without leading to extreme centralization and infringing upon the fundamental properties that make up blockchains ."

Buterin emphasized the need for decentralization to eliminate the risk of a single point of failure in the blockchain as well as to protect a large network against coordinated attacks. Buterin also added that decentralization would not be achieved if ordinary users were not free to operate these nodes.

Faced with criticism from Buterin, Tesla CEO also did not fit when commenting right below the post of the creator of ETH, implying " He is afraid of dogs ".

After criticizing Bitcoin for destroying the environment, Elon Musk "lowered his voice".

Bitcoin price surged on Tuesday after Elon Musk tried to reinforce information about the Bitcoin mining community's commitment to improve Bitcoin's harmful energy consumption. Specifically, the price of this digital currency increased 1% to $ 39,400 in early trading yesterday.

Musk took to Twitter and signaled his support for Bitcoin miners' apparent efforts to bring about a more eco-friendly operation. Previously, this billionaire caused Bitcoin price swings when he criticized Bitcoin for destroying the environment and stopped accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment at Tesla.

If the market continues to see swings based on Elon Musk's tweets, this will be a huge setback for Bitcoin itself. The fact that the price fluctuates due to one person's tweets. removed the legitimacy of this asset class," said Matt Maley, a market expert. The pledge to have a greener impact on the environment emerged after Musk's criticism. Massive Bitcoin miners have joined the Crypto Climate Accord – an initiative to remove carbon from the industry by 2030.

Famous Bitcoin supporters Musk and Michael Saylor also said on Monday that they had a meeting with major North American Bitcoin miners, including Novogratz's Galaxy Digital and Hut 8 Mining, to discuss "the transparency in energy use".

Saylor said that the consortium agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council "to standardize energy reporting".

Since last week's market-shaking tweet, Elon Musk has positively said he still believes in Bitcoin, as long as greener energy can be used. However, the Bitcoin price is still heavily influenced by Musk's comments.

The market value of more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinGecko has fallen by about $800 billion from its May peak of $2.6 trillion. The Bitcoin price is also down around $25,000 from its mid-April record.

The fact that Elon Musk openly supports Bitcoin while claiming Tesla is a "green" company when it comes to producing eco-friendly, electric cars has always been controversial.

Everyone knows that Bitcoin mining takes a lot of energy and pollutes the environment. Bitcoin miners consume a lot of electricity to solve mathematical equations, confirm transaction codes to receive a large amount of digital currency in return. Some calculations show that the total electricity consumption of Bitcoin miners in the world is equivalent to the entire electricity usage of Finland.

The transition could give Ether a big boost in the face of Bitcoin's growing backlash on environmental issues.

Users and developers of the world's most used blockchain have been embroiled in fierce debates over its carbon footprint since its inception. And now, new breakthroughs will finally allow this blockchain to dramatically cut its energy use within a year, or even sooner.

Ethereum and its rival Bitcoin both operate using a system called proof-of-work, which requires a global network of computers to operate continuously. Software developers on the Ethereum platform have for years been looking for ways to transition this blockchain to a new system called proof-of-stake, which uses a completely different approach to increase the reliability. network security, while eliminating carbon emissions.

This change - which was delayed by complex technical flaws - failed to arrive in time to save the crypto world, which was in the midst of the biggest upheaval ever seen after Elon Musk's announcement. Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin car payments because the energy usage for that process is too high. The Bitcoin network currently uses more energy per year than Pakistan or the UAE, according to data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption index. However, this metric does not represent Ethereum's energy usage.

“ Moving to proof-of-stake has become an urgent matter for us because of the growth of crypto in general and Ethereum in particular over the past year, ” Vitalik Buterin, the inventor of Ethereum, said in an interview. question. He hopes to make the change by the end of this year, while others say it will start in the first half of 2022. This timeline is up to a year earlier than expected in December of this year. last.

" I'm certainly happy that one of the biggest problems of blockchain will be gone once proof-of-stake is complete, " said Buterin. He has urged developers to learn about this transition since his blockchain launched in 2015. " It's amazing "

The change will certainly help push up the price of the Ether cryptocurrency - which is needed to use Ethereum - as environmentally-conscious investors notice its remarkably low carbon footprint. Much of the criticism of the proof-of-work mechanism comes from young investors (millennials) and investors who uphold positive environmental, social, and regulatory (or ESG) standards. .

" It's hard to ignore that the ESG trend is going to be very important, " said Wilson Withiam, an analyst at Messari who specializes in blockchain protocols. " If you look for Ether as an investment, it is not surrounded by such criticisms "

Pantera Capital, an early Bitcoin investment firm, agrees. “ Ethereum has a large ecosystem of decentralized financial applications with rapid growth, ” Dan Morehead, founder of Pantera, wrote in a letter to investors on May 10. " Combining those two, we think Ethereum will continue to achieve the same market share as Bitcoin ."

The transformation that Ethereum developers are making is a huge project. They created, tested, and deployed a completely new solution to secure their network, while maintaining the existing blockchain. Then, when the time is right, they will merge the existing blockchain into a new architecture that uses proof-of-stake to validate transactions. This transition will also greatly increase the speed of transactions that Ethereum can process, making it better compete with well-known payment networks like Visa or Mastercard. Proof-of-work uses capital costs to purchase and maintain computer hardware and electricity to run them in the form of financial investments that need to be paid by the participants processing on the network, called miners. In return, the first miner to validate a Bitcoin or Ethereum chain of transactions is eventually rewarded with free Bitcoin or Ether.

The system has been criticized for years, most recently by Elon Musk, who calls the mechanism's energy-consumption trends "insane".

In proof-of-stake, the Ether cryptocurrency will replace hardware and electricity to act as capital expenditure. A user needs to spend a minimum of 32 Ether to "stake" on the new network. The more Ether a user stakes, the higher the chance they will be selected to process the next chain of transactions, which results in a free Ether as proof-of-work, only twice as much. little.

To date, there have been over 4.6 million Ether staked on what is known as the beacon chain, which is worth around $11.5 billion at today's price of $2,503/ETH. This means that once proof-of-stake goes into effect, the only electricity costs will come from the servers hosting the Ethereum nodes, similar to any company using cloud computing.

" No one talks about Netflix's environmental footprint, because they just run on the server, " said Tim Beiko, Ethereum Foundation's new network development coordinator, in charge of fund setup and oversight. development of the Ethereum protocol.

Danny Ryan, a researcher at the organization, says that Ethereum's proof-of-work uses 45,000 gigawatt hours per year. With proof-of-stake, " you can validate a blockchain with just a normal laptop " he said. “My estimate is that you will see a power consumption of only 1/10,000th of the current Ethereum network ”

One of the first forays came from the developers who created a system where contracts on Ethereum could be executed off the main chain, called "roll ups". This takes a lot of pressure and requests off the main platform network, and also means that the network will need to make fewer changes.

The next hop is associated with roll ups. The transition to the new Ethereum, called ETH 2.0, will cause the network to be split into 64 geographic regions, known as "sharding". Transactions on one shard will be identical to the main network which links to all other shards, making the overall network much faster. However, this is also a complex issue, a difficult security question, and it is slowing down the transition.

Once roll ups can be used for transactions, that means shards only need to store data, Beiko said. In the previous model, the sharding system had to be up and running before Ethereum could move to proof-of-stake. But now there is no need for that anymore.

" Shading has gone from being very complicated to not being too complicated, " said Beiko. " It's no longer a roadblock "

Roll ups are limited by the amount of data linked to the blockchain they can contain, Buterin said. This used to be a problem before developers realized that shards could store data.

" If you can release data on-chain, which you can do with shards, then the scale will be greatly increased, " said Buterin.

Beiko says proof-of-stake has made significant progress, as demonstrated by a recent test run in which transactions on the existing Ethereum blockchain were successfully merged into the proof-of-stake system. .

" I am much more confident than a month ago, " he said. " There's a whole host of dilemmas to explore, but the underlying architecture is there and quite promising ."

According to Forbes estimates, dozens of billionaires who built their fortunes in the crypto world lost $15.5 billion.

Sam Bankman-Fried

The biggest loser (in USD) was Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of crypto trading firm Alameda Research. As one of the youngest self-made billionaires on Forbes' billionaires list, Bankman-Fried's net worth skyrocketed after launching FTX, a crypto derivatives exchange, in 2019. Most of Bankman-Fried's wealth comes from the FTX he holds. At one point, Bankman-Fried's assets were as high as $16.7 billion at the time of Bitcoin's peak on May 10. However, the value of FTX has dropped by 37%, causing the block to have now dropped remaining 11.5 billion USD on May 19.

Winklevoss Twins

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, twin brothers who famously feuded with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook, have seen their net worth drop by $900 million each over the past nine days, down 24% down to about $2.9 billion per person.

As early as 2012, the twins used the $65 million settlement from the dispute with Facebook to invest in Bitcoin, before launching the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange in 2014. Gemini exchange is currently processing transaction volume of 200 million USD per day. Michael Saylor

The person with the largest proportion of influencer assets is Michael Saylor – CEO of MicroStrategy. The former dot-com billionaire is now a Bitcoin investor. In October 2020, Michael Saylor bought 17,732 Bitcoins for $175 million. Throughout 2020, he also directed his business analytics software company MicroStrategy to invest in Bitcoin; This business bought 70,784 Bitcoins for $1.1 billion. At the height of Bitcoin, Saylor's fortune was $3.3 billion, but has dropped 45%, to $1.8 billion in just 9 days.

The plunge of the crypto market in the red has also taken away Vitalik Buterin's billionaire status, which lasted only a few weeks, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform. Accordingly, Vitalik Buterin became a billionaire on May 3 when Ether hit nearly $3,300 each. Vitalik Buterin's total assets were even estimated at around $1.4 billion when Ether's value surged past $4,300 on May 12.

But with the recent crash of the electronic market, Forbes estimates Vitalik Buterin's current net worth at around $850 million. Brian Armstrong is the current CEO of Coinbase, one of the largest and most popular Bitcoin exchanges in the world. With the majority of his fortune in Coinbase shares, Brian Armstrong quickly became a billionaire when the exchange successfully IPOed and was valued at $85 billion on Nasdaq on April 14. As of May 10, Brian Armstrong's total net worth was about $9.8 billion. However, after the Bitcoin crash on May 19, Brian Armstrong's total wealth dropped 15% to $8.3 billion. Like Brian Armstrong, the majority of the main asset of Fred Ehrsam – the co-founder of Coinbase – is the stock of this exchange. Fred Ehrsam quickly became a billionaire by the time Coinbase was successfully listed. As of May 10, Fred Ehrsam's total assets were worth about $3.4 billion. However, on May 19, Fred Ehrsam's total assets dropped to $ 2.9 billion, with a decrease of up to 27%. Chris Larsen is the co-founder of Ripple (XRP) – the 6th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. As the owner of the largest number of Ripple coins, Chris Larsen is considered by Forbes as one of the richest crypto billionaires in the world. As of May 10, 2021, the net worth of the "father" of XRP is about $6.9 billion. However, by May 19, 2021, Chris Larsen's fortune had decreased by 19%, to only $ 5.6 billion. Jed McCaleb

Along with Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb is also the co-founder of Ripple. The former programmer himself also owns a large amount of XRP coins. As of May 10, Jed McCaleb's net worth is around $6 billion. However, the asset lost about $1.6 billion on May 19, down to $4.4 billion, as the value of XRP plummeted. Barry Silbert

Barry Silbert is one of the five founding members of the Digital Currency Group. Among Digital Currency Group's subsidiaries, Grayscale is the largest company in terms of scale, specializing in the management and supervision of digital assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies with a total value of up to 28 billion USD.

Barry Silbert's fortune comes mainly from his shares in Grayscale. On May 19, Barry Silbert's fortune was only $1.8 billion, down about 14% from the previous time. Changpeng Zhao

Changpeng Zhao (or "CZ") is one of the well-known figures in the blockchain and crypto community. Currently, CZ is the CEO of Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. In 2014, he sold his house to invest in Bitcoin. In 2017, he founded Binance and made this cryptocurrency exchange popular in just one year.

According to Forbes, Changpeng Zhao currently holds a net worth of about $1.9 billion, mainly coming from Binance. Quite interestingly, unlike the above billionaires, Changpeng Zhao's assets have almost no loss between the two milestones of May 10 and May 19.

The market may be over already, or it may end a few months from now, according to Vitalik Buterin. The massive price crash in the cryptocurrency market over the past few days has shocked investors around the world. But Vitalik Buterin was not among them - although the crisis wiped out a large part of his personal fortune.

In fact, the 27-year-old co-founder of Ethereum shared in an exclusive interview with CNN recently that he believes the crypto market is in a bubble.

However, he stressed that it is "very difficult to predict" when the bubble will burst.

"It could be over," Buterin said. "It could be over months from now." On the morning of May 19, Ethereum, the internal coin on the network that Buterin invented, fell below $1,900 — a staggering 40% drop from the night of May 18, according to Coinbase. It later recovered to around $2,700 on the morning of May 20, but this price is still down sharply from the previous record high of $4,384 on May 11.

This incident may have cost Buterin significant costs. As the Ethereum digital value in Buterin's public wallet stood at around $870 million on the morning of May 20, a significant drop from about $1.1 billion a day earlier. Despite being only 27 years old, Buterin is a “veteran” in the crypto market who has experienced enough boom and bust cycles over the years.

“So far, we have seen the crypto bubble burst at least three times,” said the Russian-Canadian college dropout. “And often the reason bubbles end is because something happened that shows that the technology of cryptocurrency is not ready yet.”

"Cryptocurrency is not just a toy"

Buterin laid out his vision for Ethereum in his 2013 white paper, and the cryptocurrency launched two years later. Today, it is the second largest cryptocurrency in the world, after Bitcoin.

Unlike Bitcoin, which is considered "digital gold", Ethereum is a blockchain-based platform for developers to build and operate applications. It's like the Android or iOS operating system of the crypto space.

At the end of 2017, Buterin questioned whether the crypto space had really reached its market valuation. At the time, it had just crossed the $500 billion mark. At the time, he noted that it has in fact gained little and that the price of the cryptocurrency will soon increase.

However, what Buterin values is not the FOMO sentiment of the community, but rather the encouragement of the "huge" advances that cryptocurrency technology and applications have made in recent years.

For example, Ethereum activity has skyrocketed in recent months as it is the network that supports the sale of many non-fungible tokens, aka NFTs.

“It looks like crypto is closer to being ready to go mainstream than it was four years ago,” Buterin said. “Cryptocurrency is not just a toy anymore.”

Buterin added that while he is uncertain, there is a "potential" that Ethereum will eventually catch up to and surpass Bitcoin in terms of market value.

Element "Elon"

However, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies in general still have problems. First, they are still extremely volatile, especially for retail investors accustomed to stock market moves.

And "some billionaires" seem to be treating crypto as a toy. A typical example is Elon Musk with causing waves of virtual currency to shake the market.

Public sentiment took a drastic turn after Musk tweeted on May 12 that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin payments due to environmental concerns about cryptocurrencies. The $365 billion market was gone that day, according to CNBC .

Buterin acknowledged that the crypto market tends to be "vulnerable" to disruptive events, before they can "build an immune system over time".

"Elon Musk's tweets are something the crypto space has only been getting into for the first time, quite literally, in the last few months," Buterin said. "I think it's reasonable to expect a little bit of madness. But the market will learn and Elon won't be able to exert an influence like this forever."

The Tesla CEO also repeatedly pumped Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started out as a joke, before mocking it during an appearance on Saturday Night Live earlier this month. And Buterin is extremely interested in this billionaire's passion for Dogecoin.

"The fact that he's a $100+ billion billionaire or the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, none of this changes the fact that he's ultimately a human being - and humans have a strange association with dogs," Buterin shared. "I don't think Elon Musk has any bad intentions behind his actions."

Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum, said governments cannot completely block blockchain but they can make it harder for people to access.

"Please don't give me virtual money"

Another animal trending cryptocurrency other than Dogecoin that many are excited about is Shiba Inu, which also started as a joke.

The coin depreciated by about a third last week after Buterin donated a billion dollars worth at the time to the Covid-19 relief fund in India.

"The challenge with these 'dog coins' is that the market for them is still pretty thin," Buterin said. "There's really no way to sell a billion dollars of Shiba Inu coins and get more than a few million dollars because of the huge slippage."

Buterin also recently announced plans to burn, or remove from the market 90% of its Shiba Inu cryptocurrency, which has been donated by multiple senders. Buterin also emphasized that he did not want to be given to him by "someone" who created the coin for "marketing" purposes.

"First of all, I don't really know or understand a lot of these projects. So I can't endorse them," he said. "I saw in my wallet a few thousand dollars something called free coins. I don't know what they are."

Buterin urged those who want to "do something warm and soft" with the crypto supply to donate it directly to charity.

Governments Can Make Cryptocurrency Survival Difficult

The latest crypto sell-off was triggered in part by fears of a crackdown in China. A trio of Chinese banking and financial watchdogs said on May 18 that financial institutions and payment companies should not engage in any crypto-related transactions, as well as should not provide crypto-related services to customers.

Speaking about policy news from China, Buterin acknowledged that regulation is "always a concern," although concerns about outright bans have faded.

"Doing anything like that seems much harder and less realistic," Buterin said. “But at the same time, governments have a lot of power to make it harder to get into the crypto space.”

While blockchains are decentralized and "governments can't completely take them down," Buterin said governments can block or restrict access.

“It is important to listen to regulators to try to do their best to address concerns,” the Ethereum creator also added that one of the risks is the relationship between cryptocurrencies. and regulators became "more confrontational than necessary". Ethereum fees will decrease

Another important problem facing the Ethereum network is the high transaction fees that affect the user experience. Vitalik Buterin acknowledges this problem and admits that at the moment the system can only handle 20-50 transactions per second. While the demand for use far exceeds that number many times.

But he said he is "very confident" that costs will come down soon, as a major engineering overhaul is underway that will allow it to scale quickly.

Ethereum is moving away from Proof of Work, the original algorithm in blockchain technology, towards a newer concept called Proof of Stake. Simply put, this upgrade means that system participants are incentivized with rewards, paid in Ethereum, to stay online and keep the network under control. According to a recent study, switching to Proof-of-Stake will help Ethereum cut the amount of electricity consumed by mining operations by 99%.

"We're going from consuming energy similar to a medium-sized country to just consuming energy like a village," Buterin said.

And he also does not rule out the possibility that Ethereum will one day "catch up and even surpass Bitcoin" to become the world's largest cryptocurrency.

“If bitcoin sticks with its technology, Proof-of-Work path and mining as it is, there is a big risk that it will be left behind,” he asserted.

Elon Musk announced that he has not and will not sell any Dogecoin coins he is holding. Earlier, Tesla and SpaceX's CEO posted on Twitter a photo of a laptop with a $1 bill sticker on it with the caption: "How many Dogecoins in the window." And when social media users take a closer look, this note has a picture of a Shiba Inu dog, the symbol of Dogecoin, in place of George Washington. Musk also said the coin was a gift from a longtime Tesla fan. This is the second time this week that Elon Musk has publicly defended the cryptocurrency, after making an announcement on Twitter that Tesla will hold onto its Bitcoins as the market shows signs of a crash. He had previously faced criticism from social media users, with some claiming that he sold his Bitcoins when its price was at the top of the market. He responded by tweeting that the electric car company has a "Diamond Hand," referring to traders who hold stocks when prices fall with the goal of making long-term profits. The drop in cryptocurrency value over the past few days, which is said to have started after Elon Musk posted an announcement saying that Tesla is suspending the use of Bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicle orders, because of concerns about the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. Since then, however, he has repeatedly said that the company will keep its Bitcoins and will allow the use of the virtual currency to trade again when mining becomes more sustainable. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance has estimated that the Bitcoin industry's annual energy consumption is on par with that of a country the size of Malaysia. And most of the mining is located in regions of China, where electricity is produced cheaply by coal-fired power plants. Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin at the end of 2020 when the price per coin was below $20,000 and sold 10% in early 2021, when the price hit $50,000, making a profit of $101 million.

The development team behind Dogecoin has been collaborating with Elon Musk as early as 2019 – 2 years ago when the value of this cryptocurrency skyrocketed thanks to the Tesla CEO's "inflating" efforts, according to new information posted by Decrypt.

Accordingly, in an exclusive interview with this news site, the Dogecoin development team confirmed that billionaire Elon Musk offered to spend money to fund this crypto project in 2019. However, Elon's offer Musk was rejected. Instead, the 'father' of Dogecoin asked Elon Musk for advice as they plan to improve the coin to make it a more eco-friendly alternative to Bitcoin. Dogecoin surged as much as 20% earlier the same day after the Tesla boss said he was engaged in work to improve the cryptocurrency's trading efficiency.

"Working with Doge developers to improve the system's trading efficiency. Promise has potential," Musk wrote on Twitter. Dogecoin then went from around $0.43 to $0.52 on crypto exchange Binance shortly after the tweet.

According to CoinMarketCap.com, from being a 'worthless' coin at the end of 2020, Dogecoin has become the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, and is up more than a hundredfold this year as the Speculators flocked to this asset class. The price of Dogecoin has skyrocketed under Musk's patronage, from $0.008 in January 2021, to an all-time high of $0.71. SpaceX also previously said it will launch the "DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon" in the first quarter of 2022 and will accept payments in the Dogecoin cryptocurrency.

Due to the strong price volatility of Dogecoin, a lot of people have become USD millionaires, mainly young individual investors with a reckless investment 'taste', ready to put their money in the coins. high-risk coin. Glauber Contessoto, a 33-year-old investor in Los Angeles (USA) is one such case. This investor became a millionaire after spending 180,000 USD, which was borrowed money, to buy Dogecoin and earned more than 1 million USD. Most recently, Aziz McMahon, a managing director at the London branch of Goldman Sachs, quit after making millions of dollars in profits from Dogecoin.

However, some experts are also constantly warning about the overheating of Dogecoin.

“The rise of Dogecoin is a classic example of the More Fool Theory. “When everyone [buys Dogecoin], the bubble eventually burst and you lose a lot if you don't get out in time. time. And it's almost impossible to predict with certainty when that will happen," David Kimberley, an analyst at investment app Freetrade, told CNBC.

“You can make a quick profit if you time it right, but timing the market wrong is terrible,” said Adam Zadikoff, CEO of BRD - a cryptocurrency wallet with over 7 million users - received determined.

The famous hacker group Anonymous has just announced that it will launch a virtual currency called AnonGate. Announced on the fanpage, the hacker group Anonymous said that it will build the AnonGate virtual currency as a door to the underground world, which the group calls the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). The team promises that participants who share useful information will receive an AnonGate coin as a reward. In addition, these coin holders will also receive rewards in the network, implying that AnonGate will use a proof-of-stake (Proof-of-Stake) algorithm instead of a proof-of-work (Proof-of-Work) ). Hacker group Anonymous has announced to create its own digital currency for the purpose of spreading information in the underworld. In their latest announcement, the group added that they are building a social networking app to serve as a resource for truth-seeking journalists around the world. Article writers who share useful tips or important leaks will receive an AnonGate coin as a reward. Anonymous said that once this application is completed, the final steps will be to decentralize and allow the community to take ownership.

Tesla CEO said: "People should not invest their life savings in cryptocurrencies. It is an unwise move."

Recently, Elon Musk made a remarkable statement: Tesla will halt its plan to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment when customers buy their cars.

The billionaire wrote on Twitter: " We are concerned about the rapid increase in the use of fossil fuels to mine and trade Bitcoin, especially coal. Digital currency is a good idea in many places. aspect and we believe it has a promising future. However, this cannot come at a cost to the environment ."

Musk said that Tesla still holds Bitcoin and will only trade when mining and trading this coin uses a more sustainable energy.

Just minutes after the above statement, the Bitcoin price dropped 5%. A few hours later, the price of the world's most popular digital currency sometimes bottomed to just over $46,000/dong and then recovered slightly. Elon Musk's move to "turn around" is in stark contrast to what this billionaire has done in recent months. In early February, Tesla announced that it had spent $1.5 billion on Bitcoin and would soon let customers use Bitcoin to buy its cars. By the end of March, Elon Musk said that users in the US were able to buy Tesla cars with Bitcoin.

And now, he has "turned his back" on this digital currency through his latest statement, making Bitcoin bettors nervous. According to CNBC, about $ 365 billion has evaporated from the cryptocurrency market after the above incident. By 9:22 am on May 13, Singapore time, the market had recovered somewhat when only evaporating $165.75 billion.

Notably, before making the announcement that Tesla was suspending Bitcoin payments, Musk once wrote on Twitter on May 7: "Cryptocurrency is very promising but invest with caution ".

The Tesla CEO also mentioned a video of his interview with TMZ in February. In which the billionaire said: " People shouldn't invest their life savings in cryptocurrencies. It's a bad move. wise ".

This message was sent by Musk before appearing on "Saturday Night Live" on May 8. During the show, Musk once again voiced his support for Dogecoin.

Before that, the billionaire had many times supported Bitcoin and Dogecoin on Twitter. This has contributed to pushing the price of the two digital currencies up many times.

Meanwhile, many experts have warned that investors when pouring money into cryptocurrencies. At a press conference not long ago, when asked about the bullish trend of some cryptocurrencies, Andrew Bailey – who used to be the chief executive officer of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) emphasized. : " Only buy cryptocurrencies when you are prepared to lose your investment ". Another expert commented: " Since their values do not correspond to some underlying source of value - like real estate, profits or interest rates, there is virtually no way to predict whether they will increase. or decrease at any given time. People can only speculate. "

In particular, this expert said that while all cryptocurrencies carry risks, Dogecoin seems to be the kind of money that can cause investors to " lose almost all of their money because it has no internal value." at

Last week, the cryptocurrency market went through many ups and downs.

This week, a digital "meme" has entered the world of charity, bringing with it huge price fluctuations and bewildering questions about whether the $1 billion joke can hold up. value or not.

Three weeks ago, Sandeep Nailwal, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur from New Delhi, established a Covid relief fund called India Covid Crypto Relief Fund after witnessing deaths from lack of oxygen in hospitals. institute in India.

Initially, the amount of donations only came "trickling". By the middle of this week, the fund had only raised $7.5 million. However, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum blockchain network and the famous digital currency Ether, has donated more than 50 trillion Shiba Inu – a joke that follows the famous "meme" of Dogecoin. The Shiba Inu cryptocurrency has increased in price by more than 11,000% in the past month, and based on the listed price as of the end of May 11, the 50 trillion Shiba Inu is worth around $2 billion. Buterin's donation accounts for more than 5% of the total number of Shiba Inu coins in circulation.

However, it was the donation of the founder of Ethereum that caused the price of this coin to drop by about 50%. Holders are confused as to whether to sell or not. The incident also raises doubts about the value of "memes" cryptocurrencies and whether giving charity with cryptocurrencies is a good option when their value fluctuates so much. Moreover, digital money is also a non-liquid account.

Last week, the cryptocurrency market went through many ups and downs. Tesla CEO Elon Musk caused Bitcoin to plunge after announcing he would no longer accept Bitcoin payments due to environmental concerns. A few days earlier, Musk's comments on NBC caused Dogecoin to drop 30% in price.

Despite the plunge in the price of Shiba Inu, Buterin's gift is still worth about $1 billion at the moment. Nailwal said his charity intends to gradually sell these coins so as not to affect the market.

“ Many retail investors have poured their lifetime savings into these digital currencies, ” said Nailwal. He plans to sell a few hundred thousand Shiba Inu every day, because selling them all at once will cause the price to plummet.

Robert Browning (Indian) is an individual investor who lost several thousand dollars after the above case, but he intends to stay with Shiba Inu, even to buy more. “ Cryptocurrency is not for the faint of heart ,” he said.

Since Buterin is a well-known figure in the crypto world, he is often given crypto coins every time a new coin is released as a way to advertise. Even when Shiba Inu was born late last year, half of the volume in circulation went straight to Buterin's wallet. Like the hundreds of other tokens Buterin owns in such a way, they are of very little value until a series of "memecoins" suddenly increase in price.

On paper, the number of Shiba Inu coins that Buterin owns is worth up to $ 9.1 billion - much higher than the $ 1.2 billion worth of Ethereum he currently owns. Of course, if he sold it to collect money, the price of Shiba Inu would immediately drop.

Crypto exchange Gemini Cameron co-founder Cameron said on Twitter: "Looking back, this is a great bottom-fishing opportunity."

Crypto fans saw a shock early today when Elon Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin payments due to environmental concerns.

Meanwhile, just a few months earlier, Elon Musk himself said that Tesla bought $ 1.5 billion in Bitcoin. When Cathie Wood's Ark Investment Management cited a Twitter report that Bitcoin mining could actually consume large amounts of renewable energy, the billionaire replied, "Yes".

Immediately after Elon Musk's new announcement, Bitcoin fell 15% to nearly $ 46,000 then rebounded. As of 2:45 pm in Hong Kong, this currency recorded a decrease of 6.4% and traded around 51,039 USD.

Bitcoin price in session today.

Here are some crypto experts' opinions on this:

Will Bitcoin make a new high?

According to David Grider of Fundstrat Global Advisors, this could be the sell-off that could push Bitcoin to new highs. " We think this claim has been overblown, and it wouldn't be surprising if Tesla was signaling a green energy mining plan, " he said.

In a note on Wednesday, Grider said Bitcoin's price has eased, but he remains optimistic at $ 100,000 in the future.

Go find the answer

Investor Michael Terpin said: " The most plausible explanation is that Elon Musk is under pressure from ideas that a CEO of a green energy business owns cryptocurrency ."

He added: " First, the energy consumed almost without sending Bitcoin and the exploitation of this coin is also less energy-intensive than mining gold, or power supply systems Bank around the globe . "

Keep track of other digital currencies

Some other experts believe that it is very likely that Musk will aim to promote a different digital currency than green energy mining. One of the most likes on Twitter after Musk's announcement came from Billy Markus - co-founder of Dogecoin.

" If only there was a mined digital currency that produced a lower carbon rate than Bitcoin and had a dog logo on it, " said Markus .

However, for some, Elon Musk's move is just to add to distrust. Yassine Elmandjra, a crypto analyst at Ark, said in an answer to Musk's tweet: " Let's say your account was hacked without our knowledge ."

Meanwhile, Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini Cameron, shared on Twitter: " Looking back, this is a great bottom-fishing opportunity .

Just a few hours after Elon Musk's tweet announced the cessation of accepting Bitcoin payments when buying a Tesla car, hundreds of billions of dollars of crypto market cap were wiped out from the market. According to Smartglobies.com data, by the time Musk sent out his tweet, the total market capitalization of the crypto market was about $ 2,430 billion. But about 2 hours later, the market capitalization of the whole market was only about 2.064 billion USD after evaporating about 365.85 billion USD However, in a tweet last night, Musk said that Tesla "is concerned about the growing use of fossil fuels in Bitcoin mining and trading, especially coal, which is the emitting fuel. the worst of them all . " While Bitcoin suffered a steep price drop of 12% and at times falls below $ 50,000, its lowest level since April 24 to date. However, despite this deep drop, the price of Bitcoin has risen 400% in the past 12 months. Other cryptocurrencies also fell upright last night on varying degrees. Currently most of these cryptocurrencies have recovered slightly from the deep drop last night. Bitcoin is not issued or guaranteed by any central bank. Instead, it is maintained by a network of users known as "miners." These miners' computers will run complex algorithms that consume a lot of energy to mine or trade bitcoins. Currently, the energy consumption of the Bitcoin mining network is already equivalent to the annual usage of a number of countries. From last year, Bitcoin started gaining traction when companies like Tesla and Square announced the adoption of Bitcoin as a means of payment, and major financial institutions also joined the cryptocurrency arena. Major banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are also looking to give their wealthy clients access to this investment.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the automaker was buying $ 1.5 billion worth of Bitcoins in February 21, as well as facilitating customers to buy cars with the digital currency, causing the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket. But after Musk's turnaround a few hours ago, the Bitcoin price has now plunged from over $ 56,000, sometimes down to under $ 50,000 / VND.

In his new tweet, Musk wrote, "Tesla will ban car purchases with Bitcoin. Mining and trading virtual currency drives up demand for fossil fuels. Cryptocurrencies are a good idea at many levels." But we want to commit to the future, no price is worth (protecting) the environment.Tesla will not sell a single Bitcoin and we will only trade it. when mining and trading money more reasonable energy consumption We also expect other cryptocurrencies to use energy per transaction. Right now, there is a strong wave of opposition to Bitcoin for environmental reasons. "Mining bitcoin" is considered an act of wasting electricity resources, computer hardware, especially releasing toxic gases into the environment and contributing to global warming.