![]() A sudden selloff on May 19 sent the price of bitcoin down 30 percent, and hundreds of thousands of traders were completely liquidated. But crypto is also incredibly volatile, as evidenced in the wild fluctuations seen this May. Both institutional and ordinary investors have been along for the ride. (Recode’s Rebecca Heilweil has an explainer.) The price of bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, has gone from $5,000 to $6,000 a year ago to surpassing $60,000 for some time this spring. Though cryptocurrencies have been around for more than a decade, they are capturing more headlines recently. And as crypto goes more mainstream, so do the memes, especially as people are getting into day trading without much of an investment plan. Bitcoin and dogecoin and ethereum are as much a cultural and internet phenomenon as they are a technological or financial one. The meme aspect of it has always been part of the appeal. And a powerful one at that.īut crypto has been operating like this practically from the beginning. There are some investors who will say they were into the GameStop trade because they believe in the value of the fledgling company, but a lot of them were there for GameStop as a meme. They managed to rankle some big names on Wall Street. You might be familiar with the GameStop saga earlier this year, when an army of traders on r/WallStreetBets helped drive a spectacular rise in the retailer’s stock price seemingly out of nowhere. Literally /XBAUqiVsPH- Elon Musk February 24, 2021 For those hoping to strike digital gold with their crypto investments, it’s important to note that his crypto success is very much the exception, not the rule. “In this financial environment, sometimes just a token with a meme or a stock with a meme or an asset with a meme is enough to get a $20 billion valuation.”īankman-Fried is a crypto billionaire. “Some things are clearly legitimate and some things are clearly bullshit, and there’s also this long tail of things that are a little bit confusing,” said Sam Bankman-Fried, the head of Alameda Research and the FTX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. Crypto is the epitome of all of this - as well as all the disarray and confusion that entails. They buy into the hype generated on platforms like Reddit and TikTok and join in. Some people are tossing tons of money into a stock or a coin not because they believe there’s something significantly different about the underlying value of the asset but because it got popular on the internet, and they think it’s funny, cool, or just something to do. The guy administering my jab in the back room of a small clinic on Coney Island told me he was buying dogecoin, the canine-inspired meme coin whose price swings wildly in part because of Elon Musk’s tweets. PayPal stock has tumbled 55% this year as the company refocused after experiencing massive growth during the pandemic.My first Covid-19 vaccine shot came with a dose of cryptocurrency advice. Williams acknowledged that there is a possibility that a broader boycott could be planned but since the momentum from #DeletePayPal faded significantly on Monday, he doesn’t think that is likely. He rates PayPal stock at Hold with a $93 price target. For reference, Wall Street expects PayPal will add 3.7 million new accounts in the third quarter, and 4.5 million in the fourth. “If action taken by consumers in response to the policy update/retraction is isolated to those that voiced displeasure via social media (or even a multiple of those that did), we would not expect there to be any noticeable impact on Net New Active Accounts,” Jefferies analyst Trevor Williams wrote in a note. This is a mere fraction of PayPal’s current 400 million user accounts and projections for new accounts. The #DeletePayPal hashtag garnered engagement from only 70,000 Twitter users between Saturday and Monday, according to data reviewed by Jefferies’ analysts. In early trading Wednesday, PayPal stock is down 0.3% to $82.82.Ī closer look at the reach of the social-media campaigns suggests that PayPal may not have much to worry about. Still, despite the retraction, PayPal shares tumbled 8% over the last two days amid the social media firestorm in which #DeletePayPal was a trending topic on Twitter. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused,” PayPal said in a statement to Barron’s this week. PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy. recently went out in error that included incorrect information. 3, was quickly withdrawn, and PayPal said the new language was never meant to be part of its policy. ![]()
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