Comments by high-profile billionaires have helped cryptocurrency values surge just a week after a sell-off sparked by fears of the Delta COVID variant. Bitcoin has soared close to $40,000 ($A54,000) after billionaires including Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos suggested the party wasn’t over yet for cryptocurrency. The unit leaped 15 percent in Asian trade to a one-month high at $39,681 ($A53,832), buoyed by reports that US retail titan Amazon was mulling the use of crypto technology and supportive tweets from Tesla.
Ethereum and Dogecoin also soared 7.3 percent and 11 percent, respectively, over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinDesk. Ethereum reached $US2330 ($A3160). Dogecoin was the last trading at about 20 cents per coin, giving it a $US28.8 billion ($A39 billion) market cap. According to Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst for the Asia Pacific at Oanda, speculation that “Amazon may be preparing to accept digital coins as payment” may have played a role in the rally. The conjecture was prompted by a job posting on Amazon’s website for a “digital currency and blockchain product lead.”
According to the job description — widely reported in various media outlets late last week — the executive would be expected to help Amazon’s payments team develop “new capabilities.” Musk, known to move markets, tweeted over the weekend that “dogecoin is money”. Last week, Musk said that Tesla and SpaceX both own Bitcoin and that his only significant personal investments outside his companies were in Bitcoin, ethereum, and Dogecoin. “The bulls are back in town, and this time, it seems like they are back with a vengeance,” said AvaTrade analyst Naeem Aslam. “One of the biggest events was (Tesla boss) Elon Musk once again showing support for bitcoin and indicating that Tesla would likely start accepting bitcoin again.”
Dogecoin plummeted in May after Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live and called it a “hustle.” It came after he said Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin bitcoin because of the enormous amount of energy used to mine it, causing the price to fall. Last week, however, Musk changed his tune and said Tesla would start accepting cryptocurrency payments again when around half of the power used to mine bitcoin comes from clean energy sources. “Cryptocurrencies were given a helping hand by their old friend Elon Musk … and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Elon rode to the rescue,” Craig Erlam, a senior analyst at Oanda, wrote in a note over the weekend. “The near-term outlook is looking a little brighter for cryptos.”
Twitter’s Dorsey also supported cryptocurrencies last week, saying bitcoin cBitcoincome a significant part of Twitter’s strategy in the future. “There are three trends relevant to Twitter and you, our shareholders: AI, decentralization, and the internet finally having access to a global native currency in bitcoin,” Dorsey said on an earnings call last Thursday. “We intend to lead the way in each.” Dorsey said that when it came to “the internet having native currency, Bitcoin probably is the best.”
“That’s what I think we should focus on. If the internet had a native currency, a global currency, we could move much faster with products such as super follows, commerce, subscriptions, and tip jars. We can reach every single person on the planet because of that instead of going down (a) … market-by-market approach,” he said, noting that other social networks, such as Facebook (FB), had also jumped into the space. “I think this is a big part of our future,” he said. “There’s an obvious need for this and appreciation for it.” Cryptocurrencies rallied just a week after a significant sell-off hit them. Bitcoin is still well off the record near $US65,000 ($A88,000) seen in April.
