‘I Was on Acid,’ Says Redditor Who Posted Weeks Prior About Tesla Bitcoin Buy
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Juuuuuuuuuust Kidding
Arguably the biggest news in recent Bitcoin (BTC) history came this week when the richest man in the world and his most-future thinking company, Tesla, announced plunking down close to ten percent of public firm’s cash on hand into BTC.
The occurrence has been analyzed to death, but it is now fair to say Bitcoin is a part of the legacy financial system, albeit indirectly, through all the machinations a popular public tech company enjoys-- sandwiched in there among IRAs, 401ks, mutual funds, pensions, indexes, etc. And the speculative price of BTC boomed as well on the excitement.
While CEO Elon Musk flirted for some time with Bitcoin, giving off hints in his Twitter bio and making sly comments on the subject, at least one cheeky German Redditor seemingly called Tesla’s historic BTC purchase weeks prior. The subreddit r/TSLA has only a few thousand dedicated subscribers, but u/TSLAinsider made a market-moving, financial universe-shaking call on 2 January 2021 to members paying close attention.
“I am a software dev at R&D at Tesla in California,” he assured in that early January post, “over the past 72 hours our company bought 24701 BTC at an average price of 33142$ [sic]. The way we did it was buying small amounts of BTC every few seconds and big amounts of BTC after a dip atleast [sic] 1.5%. We did this with a bot, which our team developed in Python and NodeJS. I am not a trader I dont [sic] know what will happen but I think this news should make our company worth more since everyone loves bitcoin these days?”
Comments ranged from incredulity to suspicion.
Dots, however, were connected once Tesla did acknowledge their $1.5 billion purchase, and soon folks were alleging u/TSLAinsider might’ve been more than a lucky guesser. Journalist sleuths at The New York Post tracked him down. The quick interview is one for the ages.
Turns out, he’s a 24 year old college student in Germany. “I am a young German guy and I was on Acid while I did this post in the last month,” he hilariously explained. “I had this afflatus that Elon is going to buy Bitcoin, so I created this trollpost. And now all the newspapers around the globe are writing about it, its [(sic)] kinda funny and scary to be honest.”
Funny, that is, until international financial regulators come knocking. Yikes.
Tesla Buys $1.5 BILLION of BITCOIN: Price soars to 46k!
ETH Futures Live
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) promised back in December of last year a new futures product set for 8 February 2021, CME CF Ether-Dollar Reference Rate (ETHUSD_RR). Promise delivered. The contract specs are what traders might expect: priced in dollars, 50 ETH per, open 5:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m CT from Sunday to Friday. The venerable US institution’s foray into Bitcoin futures has proven a useful tool for institutional price discovery, and an ETH version is expected to introduce veteran speculators to the world’s second most popular cryptocurrency.
Central Bank of Nigeria Throws Shade at Bitcoin
Hillary Essien of The Peoples Gazette, based in the capital city of Nigeria, Abuja, revealed this week how the “Central Bank of Nigeria [(CBN)] has ordered banks and other financial institutions to close customer accounts used in trading cryptocurrencies and other related transactions,” according to a CBN circular now no longer online. The CBN “ordered deposit money banks, non-bank financial institutions and other financial institutions to “identify persons and/or entities transacting in or operating cryptocurrency exchanges within their systems and ensure that such accounts are closed immediately,” Essien stressed.
$700,000 DeFi Bug Bounty Paid
The CTO of Idea Markets, Alexander Schlindwein apparently “found a critical bug before it went fully live!” according to new decentralized finance (DeFi) smart insurance aggregator Armor.Fi. “The bug (which would have affected successful claim payouts) was immediately fixed and did not affect any staked assets.” For his trouble, Schlindwein was awarded “1M ($700k value, mostly vested) $ARMOR tokens.” The company suggested his take might “be the biggest public @ethereum bounty to date!”
Ominous Anniversary
“Today in crypto history,” cryptocurrency exchange CoinGecko explained, “MtGox, once the largest #Bitcoin exchange in the world lost over 850,000 bitcoin 7 years ago. That amount would total up to $34 billion at today's price.” It was a watershed moment for the ecosystem, an expensive and painful lesson in centralization, trust, and literacy about having access and ownership of private keys.
WallStreetbets User Ponders Avalanche ILO to Bring Suit Against Robinhood
Sub-sub Reddit WallStreetbetsELITE members discussed the prospect of “Litigation funding,” u/nellymoser mused, “where normal people can collect money for lawsuits, called ILOs (Initial Litigation Offerings). Avalanche (AVAX), a decentralized cryptocurrency led by Cornell University Prof. Emin Gun Sirer, has started recently providing blockchain infrastructure for normal users to collect money via digital currencies.” Further citing a profile of the process in Coinspeaker, u/nellymoser elaborated, “an ILO will help us as a big crowd to make it happen. In addition, everyone contributing money to that lawsuit will get a share if the outcome is positive.”
Linkin Park Co-Founder Enters the World of NFTs
Mike Shinoda of the influential so-called nu metal group Linkin Park clued fans into the burgeoning art market that is the non-fungible token (NFT). “Someone bid $10k USD on my piece (thanks!),” Shinoda cheered. “And some folks are still confused about what this is. The short answer: an experiment.” He elaborated on how the process “works like an auction; the value is determined by the bidders. At the end, one person gets the NFT. Think of it like owning a 1 of a kind item in a game, or like ‘owning’ an instagram post. It’s a weird thing to own, yes, but here’s the crazy thing. Even if I upload the full version of the contained song to DSPs worldwide (which I can still do), I would never get even close to $10k, after fees by DSPs, label, marketing, etc.”
By C. Edward Kelso, NBTV contributor.
Find more of Kelso’s work here: @coinfugazi / coinfugazi.com