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 multiple tweets in support of dogecoin – and some in the cryptocurrency world are unimpressed.
Nic Carter, a venture capitalist known for his optimistic stance on bitcoin, thinks Musk’s enthusiasm for the meme-inspired digital token is “disturbing” as it is primarily used as a “vehicle for speculation.”
“Unfortunately, many retail gamblers will lose money to dogecoin in the long run because there really isn’t much in the way of interesting technology,” Carter, the co-founder of Castle Island Ventures and data company Coin Metrics, told CNBC. Street signs Europe “Wednesday.
“All it can really do is get zombified and stick around and be an empty shell for people’s expectations and for their entertainment.”
Carter said dogecoin introduced it to crypto in 2013 and that while it was “entertaining and fun” at the time, it is now “sort of an empty shell.”
Dogecoin was briefly ranked No. 10 virtual currency by market value this week, according to CoinMarketCap data, as tweets from Musk and music industry icons Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons pushed the price to an all-time high.
Founded in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, Dogecoin was intended to be used as a faster – but “fun” alternative to bitcoin. It is based on the once popular “doge” memo, which depicts a shiba inu dog next to multicolored text in comically no font.
After a brief two-day hiatus from Twitter, Musk returned to make several tweets about the dogecoin, calling it “the people’s crypto.”
Carter wasn’t the only bitcoin aficionado to criticize Musk for his comments about dogecoin. Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said he wished Musk wouldn’t make such tweets.
“Dogecoin reminds me a lot of GameStop,” Novogratz told CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” referring to the physical video game retailer who saw its stock fluctuate dramatically after members of a Reddit board piled into the heavily shorted stocks. .
“It’s a meme,” he said. “It was equally funny, but now it is at a market value, where people will lose a lot of money in doge.”
“Bitcoin has a real purpose, Etheruem has a real purpose, many of the stablecoins have a real purpose,” Novogratz added. “Doge is kind of a meme, kind of a joke.”
The former hedge fund manager compared Musk’s comments on dogecoin to his infamous ‘funding secured’ tweet in 2018, where he claimed he was considering taking Tesla privately for $ 420. Musk agreed to pay a fine and resigned as Tesla chairman to reach a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on the matter.
Tesla unveiled a $ 1.5 billion investment in bitcoin on Monday, in news that the price of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency skyrocketed and sparked speculation as to whether more major companies would do the same.
Carter said that while he found the company’s purchase of bitcoin “interesting,” he does not advise the companies he has invested in to follow suit.
“I don’t put my startups’ assets into bitcoin and, frankly, I don’t necessarily think this is the most prudent approach for a CFO,” he said.