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Elon Musk: Bitcoin or Doge?
The cryptosphere is bewildered and asks itself a question as futile as it is amusing: Does Elon Musk, the richest man in the world prefer Bitcoin or Doge? About a week ago, Tesla’s boss updated his Twitter profile with only the Bitcoin logo. The news spread like wildfire and was obviously greeted by Bitcoiners and the price of BTC increased by 11%. Mr. Space X even later stated “Bitcoin is on the verge of being widely accepted by traditional finance”. But 24 hours ago, he removed the B of Bitcoin from his profile and published a whole series of tweets praising the Dogecoin, saying that it was “the crypto of the people”. It should be remembered that the Doge is a crypto that was created as a joke, but which has managed, thanks to the WallStreetBets in particular, to make it into the top 10 cryptos. Not bad for a joke!
PayPal: one more step towards cryptocurrencies
A few weeks ago, PayPal’s announcement to integrate cryptocurrencies services and to allow its users to buy, sell and keep cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum had made a lot of noise. At the beginning of this year, the payment giant confirms its pro-crypto position. Indeed, the company said it would “significantly invest” in a “new crypto, blockchain and digital currency business unit” that it believes will “help shape a more inclusive future”. The company’s CEO, Dan Schulman, did not give details, but said in a briefing to investors that “the volume of crypto-actives traded” on the PayPal platform had “far exceeded expectations”. He also noted that the current financial system was “archaic”. We should therefore hear about PayPal crypto version very quickly.
Visa gets closer to crypto
Hardly a week goes by without the Visa giant taking another step towards cryptocurrencies. After partnering with the Bitpanda platform to launch a crypto debit card, after the media release of Visa CEO Alfred Kelly who said that the company wanted to “work with wallets and cryptocurrencies” and that “all cryptocurrencies were like digital gold”, Visa has reached an agreement with the neo-bank First Boulevard a banking institution that will become the first partner to pilot Visa’s cryptocurrency API offerings, an API is an application programming interface. In other words, Visa seems to be doing technical testing locally before deploying later this year a whole range of cryptos services for all its customers. To be continued.
Ethereum: in great shape
Two news in one about Ether. First of all, ETH finally surpassed its all-time record by approaching $1,700 on February 3rd. It is currently hovering around $1,600. Secondly, the interest in Ether seems to be growing stronger and stronger. The American investment company crypto Grayscale reported that Ether flows have surpassed those of Bitcoin. Its Ether Trust has indeed been inflated by an additional 24,800 ETH (or $38 million) bringing the total amount under management to $4.3 billion. In comparison, Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust weighs nearly $22.5 billion.
The Winklevoss twins, the Bitcoin Billionaires (BTC), will produce a film about the GameStop case
We end with some Hollywood news. The famous Winklevoss twins, the Bitcoin billionaires known notably for having been robbed of the idea of Facebook by a certain Mark Zuckerberg, are going to produce a film on the recent GameStop affair that saw amateur traders, the WallStreetBets, joining forces via a Reddit page and causing billions of dollars to be lost to Wall Street hedge funds that didn’t really appreciate it. MGM Studios recently acquired the rights to a book proposal on the subject and bestselling author Ben Mezrich is currently in the process of writing. He is the author of the Facebook novel The Social Network, which was adapted for the cinema under the title The Social Network, featuring the Winklevoss twins… the circle is complete!